


Backmarkers

by nookienostradamus



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Adoption, Because I can't NOT write self-loathing Hank, Don't Like Don't Read, Eventual Smut, Fighting, Gavin Gets Redeemed, Injury, M/M, Mentions of past child abuse, Modern AU, No Gav900, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Overdose (Non-Fatal), Past Drug Addiction, Scars, Self-Destructive Behavior, Self-Loathing, Slow Burn, past alcoholism, supportive family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-05-28 13:06:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19394761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nookienostradamus/pseuds/nookienostradamus
Summary: Once upon a time, Hank Anderson was a World Championship Formula One racing driver. He made headlines, hit rock bottom, then soared triumphantly back. Hank had been sitting on top of the world—a sporting hero—until a terrible crash ended his career...and nearly his life.Now, Hank oversees Manfred Motors Racing, one of two U.S.-based F1 teams. He's struggling to keep the team afloat near the end of the 2019 season, as problem after problem leaves them at the bottom of the grid. With money running out, the team owner's health failing, one driver leaving and the other dealing with trauma, it's hard to see a future for Manfred Racing.Then Hank discovers Connor Stern, an up-and-coming driver on the domestic circuit. The kid is fast, with a bold technique and serious star power. Hemightbe the one to pull the team out of the gutter. But Connor comes with some baggage of his own, including a longtime fixation on Hank himself. His presence causes tension on the team—the last thing Hank needs considering a rival manager with a vendetta is out to make him pay for past wrongs. The team has to come together somehow...and Hank and Connor must address the feelings growing between them.





	1. September 2019

**Author's Note:**

> _Backmarker_ : In F1 racing slang, a slower driver or car at the rear of the field, who is often "lapped," or passed, by faster drivers.
> 
> This project has been a long time coming. Based on a [Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/YeWriterBitche/status/1104950412824715271) from March 2019. 
> 
> I owe a huge debt of thanks to my beta (and an incredible writer in her own right), [JolliSkies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JolliSkies/pseuds/JolliSkies)! Thank you for your edits—and your patience!
> 
> I didn't use archive warnings for violence, but there are descriptions of car accidents and injuries in here. Also heads-up for almost every character having a fucked-up past, because that's how I roll.

One shitty day wasn’t headline news after a lifetime of shitty days. But for Hank Anderson, Friday the twenty-second had the beginnings of a particularly choice one.

He’d been up since one-thirty that morning in his San Diego hotel room, waiting for the call that came around two o’clock. Not that he didn’t already know what happened after streaming the live feed of the Singapore Grand Prix on his laptop. A disappointing finish for the Manfred Motors Formula One team; yet another in a long string of them over the past season.

Carl Manfred, the team’s owner who was there in Hank’s stead, tried to be upbeat on the call, but even his usual pep sounded worn-down and forced. 

When Hank hung up, he limped out to the balcony of his hotel room. He’d turned down a prescription for oxys, of course, but Tylenol wasn’t getting the job done. He popped another three pills, trying to bail out a sinking canoe with a paper cup, and stretched his leg out in the cool, coastal air. The foam boot with its rigid plastic spine and Velcro fastenings made his calf sweat and his foot ache even more.

Bunion surgery: a humiliating fix for an old-guy problem. Hank had been embarrassed for the surgeon, even though he’d worked on Carl before and was one of the best in the country. Some of the best doctors from all over the world had worked on Hank for _far_ more exciting reasons than a fucking hammertoe. That had been in the nineties, though. Most of those guys had to be retired by now. 

Hank probably should be, too.

Maybe he’d consider it. If Manfred folded, it might be a sign.

Chugging orange juice from the carton, Hank looked out over Mission Bay: the low ridges of its islands and the black water. Lights sparkled in clusters around the water’s edge as tourists partied on into the morning. Having felt like a tourist in the world his whole life, Hank couldn’t begrudge them. What sucked most about California, in his opinion, were the Californians. 

At least the pre-dawn chill calmed the sweaty itching of his leg and cleared his head. He thought hard about calling up Carl’s kid, Markus, and begging off the road trip he had planned. In five or so hours, they were supposed to be on their way down the coast to some IndyCar horrorshow. The last goddamn thing Hank wanted to look at today was another race.

People in racing don’t watch like spectators do. They’re trackside, sure—best seats in the house. But they’ve got their eyes glued to monitors, relying on the hundreds of CCTV eyes along the circuit, which send footage of every curve and straightaway to the pit. Further back in the garage, team engineers and mechanics have their own walls of screens and read-outs, scrutinizing feedback from sensors embedded in some of the world’s most advanced driving machines. The whole operation makes up the brain of a racing team. Not that the drivers don’t have perfectly good brains for the most part, but auto racing isn’t the one-man-one-car-one-track deathmatch it used to be when Hank was starting out. 

In a way, he missed it. Everybody from the old guard did. It’s a double-edged sword, though: you can long for the rawness and excitement of the old days—when there were lone-wolf drivers who had to prop up personalities as well as teams and cars—but at the same time remember twisted metal by the barriers, black billows of smoke. 

Sometimes screaming.

Although it was rare now, Hank still woke up every so often with the smell of his own burning flesh in his nose. 

On the hotel balcony, he picked up the phone and brought up his contact list. Markus was a good kid with seemingly endless energy. Over the years that Hank had known him, he’d seen Markus translate the unfocused mania of childhood into an intense, positive ambition in his young adulthood. And for some reason, he _really_ wanted Hank at this IndyCar race. 

Hank sighed and switched the phone back off. 

A few hours later he was standing trackside at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, staring at a block of screens, a sweating can of Coke in one hand. Beside him, Markus Manfred was vibrating like a wind-up toy, popping up every so often onto the balls of his feet. 

The air smelled of burning rubber and motor oil, and vaguely of fry grease. Sloshing the last of the warm soda in the can, Hank tossed it into a cardboard recycle bin lined with blue plastic. _Cali-fucking-fornia_.

He was failing to see what had Markus so excited. This was IndyCar, a bastard cousin of his father’s chosen sport. Nobody outside the U.S. cared about Indy...and honestly not a lot of people _inside_ it cared, either. Open-wheel racing was mainly a European thing, but it had been the only kind of auto sport Hank had ever cared about. 

“There’s the flag,” Markus said, practically dancing in place. 

The rumble of engines became a roaring whine that both shook the ground underneath Hank’s feet and displaced air around his head, making his ears pop and his breath catch. He would know the moment a race began even if he were deaf and blind. The shuddering rush never got old.

He looked up, first at the screens on the pit wall and then over at Carl’s son, who clearly felt the same intensity.

“You gotta see this,” Markus said, with a grin full of movie-star-white teeth. He was a good-looking kid—striking, actually—with skin dark enough that you knew at least one of his parents was black. 

Hank used to tease Carl that Markus got all the good looks from his mother until Carl told him the kid was adopted. He didn’t know who the birth parents were and Markus had never shown any motivation to find out. 

_I wouldn’t either_ , thought Hank. It was some kind of luck getting scooped up by a billionaire single dad. To Carl’s infinite credit, he’d managed to raise his son with integrity, unlike a lot of the rich bastards Hank had run across in his lifetime. Even Leopold, his old mentor, hadn’t been able to stop all that cash and entitlement from corrupting his son. 

What Hank found most incredible, though, was the fact that Carl had never cared whether his son had any interest in auto racing. Aside from basic education, he’d left Markus free to bloom on his own. The kid sure hadn’t wasted that easy, understated support: he spoke three languages and knew enough about computers and networking to put Bill Gates to shame. 

Markus’s elbow was sharp against his ribs. “Hank,” he said, “you’re not watching.”

Hank cleared his throat. “What am I looking for?”

“Number forty-eight,” Markus said. “Approaching the first corner, in fourth.”

Looking at one of the pit wall screens, Hank picked out the dark blue Fowler Racing rig, with _48_ and _CarBuys.com_ splashed out in red and yellow across the barge boards. Its nose cone was directly up the ass of the number three car in front, dancing with its rear wheels.

“Your dad thinking about investing stateside?” Hank asked.

“He doesn’t know I’m here.”

Hank gaped. “ _You_ want to sponsor?”

Swiping the side of his hand over his lips, Markus shook his head. “Not exactly. Indy’s kind of my golden goose these days. Let’s just say I’m running a little wagering operation.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Hank asked, laughing. The hint of lightness felt incredible. “You going out of Vegas, or online?”

One side of Markus’s mouth curled up in a wry, lopsided smile. “C’mon, Hank. Vegas? Please. We’re jumping IPs at the moment to keep it under the radar. Hoping to take it international next year.”

Hank laughed again, full-throated this time. It made him sway off-balance and put a little weight on his bum foot. “Fuck me sideways,” he said, wincing. 

Looking a little guilty, Markus said, “I’m trying to help out. M.M. isn’t doing great this year. Nobody knows it better than you.”

Although Hank had never been one for excuses, it stung to hear it out loud. 

“And I keep an eye on Dad’s book,” Markus said. “Construction is up, but heavy equipment sales are down. That’s where most of Manfred Corporation’s cash comes from.”

That was news to Hank. But then, he and Carl never discussed business outside of Formula One. Accounts and spreadsheets—those were Carl’s wheelhouse. Racing was Hank’s. 

“So this gig you’ve got—it’s lucrative?” His voice sounded tight to his own ears.

Markus paused and squinted up at the Pacific coast sun bouncing off the plexiglass shield over the pit screens as the cars passed. First lap. Then he said, “Getting there. I’ve got high hopes for this guy.” He poked a finger toward the bank of screens.

Number forty-eight was hurtling toward the first corner again, now third from the front. _Had one car dropped out?_

“Tell me about him,” Hank said.

Markus’s expression was less grave. “Driver’s name is Connor Stern. I figured out Jeff Fowler, the manager, is his uncle.” Markus tilted his chin in the direction of a heavyset man frowning at one of the screens, his nose just inches away from it. A rectangular patch of sun sat right on his bald head. 

Hank smiled. “He good? Stern, I mean.”

His eyes going wide, Markus said, “Fast. Stupid fast. And ballsy.” He looked up at Fowler, then tugged on Hank’s sleeve, drawing him away from the pit wall. 

Gritting his teeth, Hank limped to join him. 

“Stern has serious potential,” Markus told him. “I may not have Dad’s eye for it—or yours—but I can see that much. Trouble is, the cars are crap. Practically every race this season that Stern hasn’t won, he’s been out with mechanical problems.”

Hank wanted to say _The cars would be crap regardless_ , but he held his tongue. IndyCar rigs were heavy and handled like goddamn tanks. They barely needed downforce to stay glued to the tarmac, the clunky bastards. In Hank’s mind, the nimble, responsive F1 cars would always be superior. 

“What make of engine are they using?” he asked.

“Ford, I think.”

“Christ.”

Markus tensed again when he looked at the screens, bounding over and leaving Hank to hobble. “C’mon, you gotta see this,” he said. 

The forty-eight car was dancing with the one in front again, Stern shoving the nose dangerously close to the second-place driver’s screaming rear tires. Hank shook his head, but squinted and looked closer. Couple years, he’d be watching the screens from a half-inch away just like poor Fowler over there. 

Coming up on corner eleven—a right angle one turn away from a dangerous-looking hairpin according to the circuit map—Stern jagged the car hard to the outside and ran it up so the front wing nearly slid like a jigsaw piece in front of the rear tire of the driver in front of him. It was a pretty nutty move, but Hank could see right away what he was going for.

“The hell is he doing?” he heard Fowler shout. The team manager tapped one of his strategists on the shoulder twice, then leaned in and hissed something inaudible over the noise of the track.

The strategist shook his head and waved toward the track.

Scowling, Hank stepped closer and craned his neck to watch the joust playing out onscreen. As Stern kept pressing, the driver in front corrected to the inside and wobbled toward the barrier before swinging the heavy back end around in an oversteer. On top of it, he panicked and brake-locked instead of turning into the skid. Stern tapped the brakes to get out of the way, then floored it, cruising through the apex of the turn and hugging its insides to shoot on by, easily passing the number fifteen car that was kicking up gravel in the trap trying to get back onto the track.

“Hot damn,” Hank whispered. In his periphery, he saw Markus look over. Another camera angle showed the forty-eight car’s ungainly rear fishtailing on the straight. Still, every other car would be comparatively slow around the curve, giving Stern plenty of time to catch up to the lead and be on the guy’s tail before they hit the starting line. 

It was a picture-perfect overtake move—by the book and as smooth as could be done in such a clunky rig. Truth was, overtaking was almost unheard of in Formula One these days. That was probably what Hank missed the most. Back then, the entire race wasn’t contingent on where a driver qualified. Hell, depending on tap-outs (or accidents), you could qualify tenth on the grid and end up at the top of the podium by the final lap.

The strategist whooped and smacked the screen, only afterward glancing over at Fowler, who had stepped back and was rubbing his sweating scalp.

“Kid’s real good,” Hank said, this time loud enough for Markus _and_ Fowler to hear. “Who’s he trained with? Who’s he driven for?”

Markus laughed and held out his hands, palms facing toward Hank. “Hey, hey! Those aren’t questions I ask.”

Hank squinted. His slim smile fell away as he turned back to the row of screens. The number forty-eight car had stalled out at the edge of the track just past the sixth corner. Wisps of white smoke were drifting up from behind the cockpit. Inside it, Stern wasn’t moving. Hank held his breath. After two long seconds, he brought one gloved hand up and slapped the wheel. The gesture looked more defeated than angry.

Fowler tore off his headset and threw it to the ground, kicking it from his path on the way to the garage. “What the hell happened now?”

One of the engineers came scurrying out, pointing back at the telemetry monitors like she could put the blame there. “We lost half injection system pressure after corner four!” she shouted. “After six, we lost all of it.” 

Fowler stomped one foot. A line of sweat sparkled on his upper lip. “Why didn’t you say something after four? Jiminy Christmas!”

It was a ridiculous expletive—worthy of a chuckle—but Hank didn’t feel like laughing.

The poor engineer babbled on, talking with her hands, using some sort of half-assed sign language that seemed to go over Fowler’s head. “We had no reason to believe we’d lost effective pressure. You can’t go by rail pressure in a variable system…”

Clearly, her words were going over his head, too. “I don’t understand what any of that talk means. Did we blow a fuel line?”

“Maybe,” the engineer conceded. “I’ll have to look at the car.”

“It’s not a blown line,” Hank cut in. 

Both Fowler and the engineer looked up, mirroring one another’s shocked expressions.

“You’d see it dumping fuel on the track,” Hank continued. “Ford engines use returnless injector systems, last time I checked. If you’re not losing fuel but you’re losing pressure, my guess is a problem with the pump, not the injector.”

If possible, Fowler’s jaw dropped further. He stuttered briefly, then said, “Just who the _heck_ are you, friend?”

Hank shifted his crutch to the left hand and held out his right. “Hank Anderson. I build engines.”

“Oh, holy shit,” whispered the engineer. She pulled off her baseball cap. “Man, uh, it’s an honor, sir.”

Beaming inwardly, Hank shifted his outstretched hand away from a still-stunned Fowler and shook the engineer’s instead. “Anything but ‘sir,’ huh, kid?” he said. “Seems like you have a great team together here. _Mostly_.” That last barb he shot right at the manager. 

By that time, Markus had sidled up to listen in. His brilliant smile cut the tension in the air. “Mister Fowler,” he said, “I apologize for not introducing my guest earlier. We were running a little close to the start of the race. Hank is the manager and chief strategist for Manfred Motors Racing.”

_At last,_ it clicked. Fowler’s eyes went wider but his mouth shut with a painful-sounding snap of teeth. He skimmed a hand over his hairless scalp, then wiped the palm on his khakis.

“Sure, of course,” he said. “It’s a big day, quite a day. Forgive me; I must have completely forgotten.”

Seeing the guy flustered poked at a pile of embers inside Hank’s chest. That pile was what was left of a raging fire that used to feed on recognition, adoration. The hundreds of young kids lining the paddock in Austria or Belgium or Japan, shouting and shaking autograph books at him. The women in tight dresses and the men in low-cut v-neck shirts—not just trackside but in pubs or in the airport—cozying up to him for the chance at a brush with fame, skin-on-skin. He took so many up on their tacit offers he stopped keeping track. And then the older, smaller, richer ones handing him platinum watches and expensive bottles of wine, not to mention bag after slick bag of uncut Colombian snow. 

“I’d be happy for you to take a look at the engine if you like, Mister Anderson,” Fowler was saying. 

Hank shook his head. “I want to talk to the kid,” he said. “Stern.” He had a top-tier international racing team to run and performance cars of his own to maintain; there was no time to give a vanity peek at some Ford monstrosity plunked in a second-rate car.

Fowler’s laugh was more of a cough. “Looking to poach my best driver, huh?” He tried to cover the real note of concern in his voice and failed. The team was obviously collapsing under the weight of its equipment, and losing Connor Stern might be a death blow.

“Just want to talk to him,” Hank said with a brief head shake.

Fowler took it as reassurance, which it wasn’t.

But if it got Hank in the door… Too early to make any judgments, but he also couldn’t let a quality driver languish. Manfred Motors sat at the bottom of the rankings for 2019. Plus, if Markus’s cryptic talk about company sales was as serious as it sounded, the whole operation could go under. All of his work lost. Better to hamstring a feeder operation than bow out of the top motor sport in the world. Bush league was bush league, regardless of whether it was popular in the U.S. 

Formula One had taught Hank nothing if not the need to cut a throat now and then.

“Connor’s still out on the track,” Fowler said. “He likes to come in with the car.”

Hank frowned, but he reserved judgment. On the kid, that was. He’d already decided that Fowler himself didn’t have the stones to run a racing team. You needed to have your hands on every piece of the operation, from engineering and maintenance to strategy and logistics. 

And a tight grip on your drivers. They were just as prone to breakdown as the cars, and it was never just a matter of knocking a part back into place. Hank had learned the hard way that people were much more complicated than engines.

The race was down to its final lap. Afterward, the paddock would be swarmed with techs, drivers, and press. Hank switched his crutch back to the right hand and limped into the garage to wait out the coming chaos. He should have thought to bring out his old cane, a heavy cherrywood number with a silver grip molded specially to fit his hand, but he’d long ago forced himself to stop relying on it. 

Parked on a backless stool set in the path of a whirring box fan, he examined the crutch given to him at the hospital: brushed aluminum with an adjustable frame and rubber the color of jaundice at both ends. The cane much more classy, for sure. Still, the day he was able to put it away for good, he’d been tempted to break the damn thing in half. But it had been a gift from his benefactor, the only man whose faith in Hank had never wavered.

After Leopold Kamski died, throwing away that one solid reminder of his generosity was not an option. 

Once his foot healed up enough to take the ridiculous boot off, he’d chuck this crutch, too. Nothing ages a man like having to lean on something. A limp says _war hero_ or _survivor_. A cane says _I’ve given up_. And Hank definitely didn’t need any more help in the aging department.

The gathered crowd parted when a towing rig hauled the number forty-eight car in. Whatever CarBuys.com was, Hank hoped the sponsorship was worth it. He scanned the room for a Tyvek suit. When nothing popped out, he roused his old bones with a grunt of effort and left the garage.

Out in the growing heat of the day, Hank shielded his eyes from the white glow that bounced off every surface. Light pricked his eyes from the corner of the plexiglass shield over the pit wall. When he blinked away the sunspots, he saw Connor Stern in the Fowler team colors staring at screens overlooking an empty track. The safety car slid by CCTV cameras one by one, but Stern didn’t appear to be following its progress.

When he got up closer to the kid’s shoulder, he cleared his throat. Hank didn’t like to touch people—even a tap—if they couldn’t see it coming...largely because he hated when others did it to him. But time was short.

The kid flinched and turned, then flinched again. Unlike with Fowler, the recognition was immediate and profound. In fact, he stood shocked for so long that it gave Hank time to recover from his own surprise. 

Connor’s face, even when dumbstruck, had that elusive type of easy beauty that almost guaranteed he didn’t know how pretty he was. Pale skin, slightly reddened over the bridge of the nose from sun streaming through his helmet visor, but otherwise healthy looking. A few small, dark freckles were scattered around—one at the crest of a high cheekbone, another near the corner of his mouth. Hank saw yet another at the clean edge of his jaw. 

He had coffee-colored eyes, the whites unmarked by streaks of red even after the stress of competition. Hank remembered looking like he’d been on a two-day bender after every race: sweating and sallow with bruise-purple darkness ringing his bloodshot eyes. The fact was, he probably _had_ been on a bender, sometimes right up to the starting flag.

This kid was clean as a goddamn Mormon; Hank wondered if he even drank soda. On the back of that thought, he hoped Connor wasn’t a Jesus freak like some of those NASCAR guys. He could barely handle righteousness, much less the kind with _self_ tacked onto the front.

“You out here doing some instant replay?” Hank asked. Thankfully, he’d recovered his wits fast enough to start the conversation. 

“Um, yeah...I mean, _yes_ ,” Connor managed. “Going back over the race. I mean, at least what there was of it.”

“You did some quality driving out there.”

That prompted more stammering. 

It was cute for now; Hank wanted to get introductions over with so it didn’t edge into annoying.

“You, uh, _watched me_?” Two small spots of color rose on Connor’s cheeks.

Hank almost shook his head. The kid was so oblivious to his own charm he could probably walk into a Hollywood casting session and walk out with a three-film deal. “I did,” Hank said. “Matter of fact, my good friend Markus over there insisted I make a special trip to see you race.”

Connor looked away, the blush getting deeper in color. “Oh, _shit_ ,” he muttered, wiping both hands along his thighs and leaving shiny streaks on the stiff Tyvek.

Stifling a grin, Hank relaxed a little. At least he swore. And _sweated_. “Wasn’t anything you did wrong as far as I could see. If not for the car, you probably would have placed. Maybe even taken the trophy.”

Connor turned back toward Hank, both pride and frustration showing plain on his face.

Maybe Hollywood wasn’t the right place for this one. It was clear he wore his feelings right on his sleeve, loud as the sponsor logo. 

Hank put out his hand. “Hank Anderson,” he said. “I work with Manfred Motors—”

“I know,” Connor cut in. “I mean...I know who you are. I’ve been a fan for a long time.”

Hank nodded, wondering what, exactly, qualified as _a long time_.

Connor almost grasped his outstretched hand, then looked down at it, horrified that he’d left his glove on. He tugged it off and tossed it on the ground, then shook Hank’s hand for real. “A real honor. Sorry I interrupted you. I’m just a little nervous. It’s...a _huge_ honor to meet you, sir.”

Hank drew his hand away and ran it through his hair. Sweat was gathering at his nape. “Just ‘Hank’ is fine. You definitely earned it with those overtake moves.” Since it looked like Connor was speechless again, Hank went right on, gesturing at the screens. “Tell me what you do when you analyze a race.”

In an almost perfectly mirrored gesture, Connor pushed one hand through his own hair, which bounced back over his brow right away. It looked like he’d loaded it with gel to keep it out of his face, but after the sweat and pressure of the helmet it was starting to curl. 

The effect was so casually disarming that Hank’s chest felt tight.

“Nothing much,” Connor said, pointing at the image of the bare track on one screen. “Just run through it lap by lap in my head. I mainly focus on the corners. I have a lot of trouble with hairpin turns.”

“That so?”

Connor looked a little abashed. “Yeah. I have a habit of braking too late around sharp corners.”

That time, Hank had to smile. “Yeah, I bet you do. But I didn’t notice any oversteering.” He wished he’d been paying closer attention to Connor’s technique earlier in the race, but at least he’d seen the overtake near eleven. That had been a bit of brilliance. Not that he was ready to say that to him... _yet_.

“Thanks,” Connor said. “I noted the angle and degree in qualifying so I could adjust my braking. That usually works.”

Hank’s brows pulled inward. “What do you mean, ‘noted the angle?’”

“Scoped it,” said Connor. “Memorized, I guess. I have an eidetic memory, so I only have to see it once. Then I can just... _feel_.”

“No fucking shit,” Hank said, not bothering to disguise his awe. “Oh,” he added, “excuse my French.”

Connor gave a smile for the first time. It sank a dimple into one cheek and crinkled the skin by his eyes. “You’ve had a long career overseas,” he said. “I hope you’d have picked some up by now.”

Hank laughed right out loud. _Damn, this kid was pulling out one surprise after another._ “Yeah, well, most of the _real_ French I’ve picked up you probably don’t wanna hear.”

“You spent the off season between 1993 and 1994 on the Riviera, right?” Connor asked. “I can’t remember the name of the town.”

“What the—how did you know that?” Hank asked, startled. “Were you even _alive_ in ninety-three?”

Ducking his head again, Connor said, “Yes, sir. I mean, _Hank_. I was born in ninety-one. It’s just...I read Nathalie Poirier’s book about you. It was a little old, but it was the only one I could find.”

“Oh, God. That book,” Hank said. Connor had butchered the pronunciation of Nathalie’s name, but Hank knew right away what he was referring to. He sighed and tucked his hair behind his right ear. “Made things seem a little more sunshine-and-roses than they actually were, to be honest.”

“Were you and Miss Poirier good friends?”

“ _Pwah-ree-ay_ ,” said Hank. “It’s okay, tough to know if you’ve never heard anyone say it. Yeah, Nathalie and I were close for a while.” The biography had been pretty pumped-up and sugarcoated, in large part because Hank and Nathalie, a reporter for _Le Monde_ at the time, had been on-and-off sleeping together for a couple years. He’d actually kicked her out of his hospital room after the accident when she offered to suck him off. Later, he’d called and apologized. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted her, it was more that he felt like nobody should want _him_ —not in that state. Mangled, burned, torn apart. 

_Finished._

His and Nathalie’s relationship—if it could even be called that—would shortly be finished, too. But she had still offered to put the book out as a way to keep Hank’s name in the sporting news. All it did was prolong his slide into obscurity.

“Maybe somebody will write another one,” Connor said, his voice bright.

“I sure hope not, kid,” said Hank. Ready to steer the conversation away from his past, he asked, “You train at Andretti’s school?”

Connor shook his head. “My uncle Jeff—he runs the team—he used to just let me play around with the cars on his track. It’s way smaller than a pro circuit, but it was a good place to learn.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, how is he your uncle?”

“He’s my mom’s brother.”

“Is she adopted?” asked Hank. “Is _he_?”

“No,” Connor said. There was a trace of some emotion in the reply that Hank couldn’t quite identify. “ _I_ am.”

“Oh, hell,” Hank said. “Sorry.”

Brightening up, Connor said, “It’s okay. Both me and my brother Chris are adopted.”

“Does your brother race?” asked Hank.

Connor smiled. “Nah. He’s getting a PhD in physics at MIT.”

Couple of talented kids the Fowler-Sterns had gotten hold of. _Kind of like Markus_ , Hank thought. “This your first IndyCar season?” he asked.

“Second,” Connor told him. “Last year, I was just feeling it out. Uncle Jeff wanted me on the team a while ago, but I didn’t want to move up from Indy Lights until I was ready.” With a wry grin, he added, “My uncle would stage these run-ins with really good drivers and talk about my progress. It was embarrassing. He still doesn’t know that _I_ know he set it all up. But he got Montoya and Franchitti to come to a couple of races, give me some coaching.”

“Well,” Hank said, scratching his chin, “you’re a natural behind the wheel. He picked up on that, but I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. Still, even the best drivers out there need guidance once in a while.” 

It was time to bring the conversation around, get at the crux of it. 

Hank felt a shallow spike of excitement in his gut; nothing like the start of a race or a bump of coke, but noticeable. Even if it was secondhand. He didn’t think he’d ever stop comparing everything—even hope—to the highest highs of his life. In part, it was because he was afraid nothing would measure up again.

“Let me ask you one more question, kid,” he said, leaning in. “You ever tried a Formula One car?”

Hank watched a shudder move up Connor’s spine, watched his muscles lock up in anticipation. Jesus, but he was an open book.

“No,” he said. “But I want to. Try, that is.”

“It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt,” Hank said. Maybe laying it on a little thick, considering that he didn’t actually have the final say in whether the Manfred team gave Connor Stern so much as a practice lap. But he wanted to bait the hook and leave it dangling.

“What’s it like?” Connor asked. His dark eyes were nearly starry.

Hank looked over at Markus, for effect. “I could talk to our team owner about possibly giving you a chance to find out. How does that sound?”

Connor was silent for a long time, first looking past Hank’s shoulder at Markus, who stood at the garage entrance, then out toward the track. 

Its surface was crisscrossed with snaking trails of rubber, windblown confetti from the ongoing award ceremony. The air still smelled of hot metal and exhaust.

“Honestly, it sounds great,” Connor said, looking up at last. His expression didn’t match the words. “Like a dream. I’ve followed, well, Formula One since I was a little kid. But Uncle Jeff has been really good to me. Always had my back. And my mom—I know she doesn’t like it that Chris is so far away. Across the country. I don’t know what she’d say if I ended up on the other side of the world.”

“It’s not an offer, Connor.”

The kid winced at the sound of his own name.

“At least not yet,” Hank clarified, holding up his hand, swinging the baited line again. “But it’s a shot at one. And you should think hard about taking that shot before you throw away a promising future.” Charming as Connor was, it was tough for Hank to keep from getting impatient. 

Connor made ballsy choices on the track, but if he couldn’t do the same off of it, maybe he wasn’t cut out for the big leagues.

“I know,” he said. “It’s just...I can’t right now.”

Softer, Hank said, “There’s no guarantee I’ll be back.” As he spoke the words, though, he felt the lie in them, heavy on the back of his tongue.

Connor raised his chin. He was maybe six foot, but still had to look up to meet Hank’s eyes. Most people did. “I know,” he said again. “Thank you.”

Hank shook his head. The afternoon was sweltering and his goddamn foot was throbbing in its foam shoe. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “Not if you’re gonna be cursing me later. I hope you have good luck out here, but if you can’t pry yourself away from what’s familiar, you probably don’t belong at the top level. This sport crushes guys who hesitate, Connor. And it kicks them when they’re down. If you don’t pop right back up, you’re as good as grease on the track.” 

He turned to start limping away, speaking over his shoulder. “You can keep following F1,” he said, “or you can get on the grid and try to _lead_. Your choice.”

When Hank’s back was fully turned and he was hobbling as fast as his aching foot would allow, Connor called out to him.

“I never followed Formula One. Not really.”

That made Hank stop, turn his head. He was working up to tear Connor down when the kid spoke again.

“I only ever followed _you_ ,” he said.

Hank’s jaw clenched—a reflex, a barrier against any more words. He had no idea what to say to that, anyway. It should have creeped him out; he should already have been dismissing IndyCar and California... _and_ Connor Stern. Instead, it took every ounce of energy Hank could muster to turn his back again and keep walking.

***

“You honestly don’t think he has what it takes?” Markus asked Hank on the drive to the airport. He was clearly disappointed.

It might have pissed Hank off more, except the Tylenol was kicking in and he was parked on the passenger seat in front of two blasting AC vents. 

“Didn’t say that,” he told Markus. “But your dad’ll tell you: driving F1 takes the right skill _and_ the right attitude. You have to want it like nothing else on earth. You’ve gotta be ruthless, you know? Make sacrifices and throw yourself into it heart and soul just to get your ass on the track every single time.”

Markus rolled his eyes. “Easy for you to say. You didn’t have any family to leave behind when you packed off to England.”

Hank had to chuckle. Markus had been dishing out real talk since he was a squalling little brat who barely cleared Hank’s kneecaps. Much like his father, he wasn’t stingy with the truth when it needed saying. 

And Hank trusted him. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “But I also didn’t have a built-in ladder to the top. I started out in Milton Keynes parking cars for people like Jeffrey Fowler. _And_ your dad.”

Markus narrowed his eyes, still looking ahead at the sun-baked asphalt. “Even my dad didn’t have money back then.”

Hank let go of a single bark of laughter. “It was nineteen eighty-six, not the Stone Age. Your dad was doing pretty well at that point.”

Shaking his head and tamping down a smile, Markus said, “Fine. It’s the principle.”

With a dismissive wave, Hank sighed and said, “Yeah, I get it.” He turned to watch the scrubby desert plants flit by as they drove, the Santa Cruz mountains cropping up jagged and blue-green on the horizon. When he glanced over again, Markus was giving him the eye.

“You’re really upset that he turned you down,” he said.

Ignoring the unsettled feeling in his gut, Hank nodded. “You were right. The kid’s got real talent. If we can get him out from behind the wheel of those clunkers, I think he could fly.”

“Well,” Markus said, drawing out the syllable, “your approach could use some work. Not everybody goes for the take-it-or-leave-it. There are ways to be more persuasive.”

“Yeah?” Hank asked, raising an eyebrow. “The fuck do you know about persuasion?”

Markus turned his head, his expression deadpan. “My dad’s a billionaire.”

Hank wanted to scowl, but he burst out laughing instead.

Instead of a handshake at the curb in front of the departures plaza, Markus gave him a warm, back-slapping hug. Hank found it sincere and comforting, not invasive, even though he didn’t usually like to be touched. Not these days. 

Markus went all in, even thumping the right shoulder blade where the stiff, crepey burn scar stretched like an inverse wing. 

Hank was unusually grateful. 

He hated being treated like some fragile thing despite his size. It wasn’t so bad when he wore long pants and shirts buttoned at the wrist; only a little of the damage showed on his hand and above his collar. But it was christing _hot_ in California and he was in shirtsleeves, one mangled arm bare.

While he soaked up the air conditioning inside the building, an airline worker approached. She looked from his booted foot to the swath of disrupted skin on his arm and asked if he wanted a wheelchair.

Hank told her to piss off.

With any luck, it would be less of an issue back at Manfred Motors HQ in Detroit. The height of summer was over and the Mistake by the Lake had largely been spared by climate change—unlike every other wave of despair in the past fifty years. 

Hank wasn’t a Motor City native, but he’d come to appreciate the scrappy little shithole he now called home. He’d joined up with Manfred when the state of the city had been pretty dire, and although it was slowly crawling to its feet again, gentrification brought its own set of problems. 

_One of these days, a fucking Whole Foods is going to go up on Gratiot, and then there’ll be no turning back._

He caught the scent of the city—its asphalt and exhaust—as he limped over the jet bridge into Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. Inside the Lyft car, he kept the windows up against the cool evening, trying to block the odor out. Nearer to home, he could smell grass and lake water. And on those days that the practice track was in use, rubber and hot asphalt. 

The Manfred estate was where Hank could center himself and winnow his thoughts down to building, racing, winning. With all the mechanics and the cars and tools packed up and gone, the garage lay quiet, thought it hardly seemed sufficient to call the sprawling complex a “garage.”

Hank’s domain was an interconnected ring of warehouse spaces, varying in size depending on function, with each accessible from the network of underground tunnels that ran below an open courtyard in the center. As well as the actual garage space where team mechanics and engineers took cars apart and inspected them from every angle, there was a testing room with banks of telemetry monitors, a welding lab just next to the bespoke engine assembly area, and a separate testing suite for the new-minted engines before they were even placed in a car.

It had been a long, hard fight with the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile—the Paris-based regulatory body for international auto sports—to get Anderson Engineering recognized as an approved engine builder for F1. Probably half of the struggle had been countering the baked-in European bias against U.S. motor sporting. American racing pretty much flouted FIA convention for all its home-grown franchises: NASCAR and IndyCar among them. To be fair, Hank couldn’t half blame folks across the pond for resisting an attitude of “we do what we want.” But, dammit, he built his racing engines to _Formula One_ spec: aspirated when the rules called for it and turbocharged when they switched; capable of spinning up to 20,000 RPM (and less when called for). When the FIA finally caught on that Hank produced something not only in line with its standards but well built enough to rival any Mercedes-Benz or Ferrari product out there, they let him on board. 

So far none of the European constructors had signed on to try a Detroit-made F1 engine, but an Indian billionaire had put in an order for six units as he tried to scrape up a team for the 2020 season. The fact was, F1 had gotten more expensive every year since Hank had started in the sport. These days, you needed hundreds of millions of dollars to keep even an established team running. And it was easier than ever to piss away a fortune in the blink of an eye.

The air was still, the compound humming from its multiple AC units as Hank dragged his suitcase through the glass doors into a lounge area. It was the smaller of two in the complex, the other halfway around the circle of linked buildings. That one had a monster LCD TV, couches, gaming consoles, two refrigerators that were constantly stocked with energy drinks and yogurt...even a pool table. Happy employees were more productive; that went without saying.

Hank was mainly concerned that they were meticulous. As a relative newcomer, his engine-building outfit still stood under the microscope, dogged by competitors looking for faults that weren’t there.

He sighed as he slapped the auto-open button on the door to the complex’s courtyard. Too much thinking and not enough resting. Seeing as he already avoided rest to avoid thinking, the past day and a half had been worse than usual.

Outside on the cobbled path, the air was nearly at the same temperature as the climate-controlled lounge. Somehow, scraps of breeze touched the tops of the ginkgo and maple trees there, while nothing outside the walls moved. It only fed Hank’s feeling that this place was a world of its own, divided from reality by some invisible membrane. 

Yet it was fragile—the whole thing was. He depended on the Manfred Corporation’s financing and not even a hundred orders from India could keep the operation afloat by itself.

In the twilight, moths traced wobbly patterns over the bushes, as if the first taste of fall had made them drunk. It was too deep into September for anything in the courtyard to flower, and even though the trees hadn’t yet started to turn, their leaves were a heavy, saturated green that looked almost weary. 

Returning this time, Hank felt that something had slipped past the protective barrier. It wouldn’t be long before other bits of reality began squeezing in. Connor Stern had followed him in like the scent of smoking tires on his clothes, and not even the silent freshness of the courtyard could push him out.

The kid was a well of possibility waiting to be tapped. In many ways the anti-Hank, or at least the opposite of the hot-rodding, shithead driver Hank had been in the nineties: humble, thoughtful, big on family. 

Shit, when you see that kind of all-around _wholesome_ , most times you end up wondering if it’s an act. But Hank had a feeling that Connor wasn’t faking anything. Someone playing at humility would have jumped at the chance to move up. This goddamn pink-cheeked kid, who all but admitted getting into racing because of _Hank,_ had turned his idol down flat to avoid disappointing his mother.

It pissed Hank off almost as much as it impressed him.

He felt a huge wave of relief as he reached the larger lounge area. He didn’t spend much time there, but through a locked door on the east-facing wall was a room only he used. 

Carl had offered to give Hank his own suite in the main house during the off season or when the team was back from races abroad. It was a tempting offer—on top of being a business leader, Carl loved comfort and innovation. His house was modern and tasteful with every amenity you could think of. 

But Hank wanted to be near his assembly operation. He wanted to be closer to the practice track that cut through an enormous swath of ground just beyond the complex.

Plus, he’d never lived like Carl did. Not really. He’d had his share of luxury hotel rooms and rented villas, had drowned himself in champagne and put roughly the GDP of a mid-sized South American country up his nose. Before rehab, the money was spent almost as soon as he had it. If he hadn’t toned things down in the last couple of good years, medical bills from the accident would have knocked him into bankruptcy. 

And now, even catering to a multi-million-dollar industry hadn’t made Hank Anderson rich or greedy.

Letting the suitcase thump down on the floor in his private quarters made him feel able to breathe for the first time in days. The room was nothing special: a bed and a chest of drawers, a few shirts hanging on a rolling rack in the corner. Desk, fridge, rug over bare polished concrete, plus its own tiny shower and sink halfway walled off from the rest of the space. It was a good thing Carl had never been inside—he would be appalled that his top engineer and strategist lived like a college student.

While he was stuffing a bag full of sweaty clothes in a laundry bag, his phone pinged. 

He pulled up a curt message from his second in command, Tina Chen. The whole sad entourage was headed back stateside after stopping to refuel in Frankfurt.

It was only a text, but Hank knew Tina could sense the same tension with so few races left in the season. She was a shrewd strategist in the pit, not to mention the fact that she could probably read people better than Hank ever would. He loved Tina’s no-bullshit attitude, as well, but what endeared her to him most was the fact that she raced motocross in the F1 off season. Launching a noisy goddamn hornet bike twenty feet in the air off a dirt slalom just _fit_ her so well it was eerie.

Against her objections, Tina had also slipped into the role of chief handler for the team’s number one driver, Gavin Reed. Gavin had a lot of raw talent, but that came with serious anger issues. Hank saw a lot of himself in Gavin, which was likely why they didn’t always get along. 

He also had a suspicion that a three-car crash in Mexico City at the tail end of 2018 had shaken Gavin more than he was letting on. None of the drivers involved had gotten more than minor injuries, but Gavin had returned cautious this season, frequently second-guessing his choices. All that added up to _slow_.

Manfred’s number two man, Simon Hauptmann, gave a more consistent performance overall. But there was something in his driving that seemed almost _bored_ —as if racing was a chore rather than the adrenaline trip it should be. In Hank’s experience, that attitude in a driver usually meant one of two things: either he was losing his taste for the sport...or he was marking time before jumping to another outfit. 

Privately, Hank suspected the second. He tried not to give any leeway to daydreams about sticking Connor Stern in Simon’s vacant car. That didn’t prevent him—after he had unpacked and rinsed off the grime of travel—from looking up the kid’s stats on the official IndyCar site.

Hank sat at the desk with a towel around his waist, his straggly hair sending cold drops of water down his back, digging through the slick-looking IndyCar website. It sure did take some digging, too; the pages were pretty but just about as easy to navigate as the official F1 site. He actually had to admire the fact that the top of the IndyCar home page was crammed with links to purchase tickets instead of F1’s nauseating animated banners. International motorsport pretended— _badly_ —that pageantry and tradition were more important than plain, cold capitalism.

When Hank managed to find the team stats page, he saw that Connor had taken an impressive three wins, racking up points for most laps as lead car in those races and a couple of others. But the sheer number of times he got knocked out with a mechanical issue put the championship well out of his reach. Fowler Racing hadn’t even placed in the series’ premier race, the Indianapolis 500.

The team was truly in the shitter. According to Wikipedia, their second driver had quit halfway through the season, with no replacement to be found. Chances were good nobody wanted to waste even middling talent on bottom-rung cars. As the picture came further into focus, Hank got so annoyed he had to shut the computer down.

Sticking a rising star like Stern in a junk-heap rig was like... _hell_ , the Mona Lisa in a five-Euro plastic frame from fucking IKEA. He only had to ask and Hank would pluck him right out of there, put him in the cockpit of a _real_ machine. Maybe scrape Manfred Motors back from the brink. 

And possibly bring Hank back, too. It was becoming harder to shake the feeling that his contribution to F1 was nothing more than a goddamn asterisk. All the podium photo ops, the parties, the jet-setting—even the superhuman feeling of roaring to a finish with the other cars behind: reduced to a box on a wiki page and one out-of-print book.

The heavy feeling in Hank’s chest seemed to seep out into his limbs as he closed the laptop, fogging his brain and making his eyelids droop. He’d hardly dropped the towel at the side of the bed and pulled the sheet up before he fell off into a deep sleep.

He woke mid-morning the next day, disoriented. The soft glow that reached his eyes wasn’t the sun but his phone, alerting him to a message from Carl. Thank God Markus had finally drilled into his dad’s head that most people these days preferred a text to a call. Hank didn’t think he could handle a ringing phone at that moment.

As usual, Carl was pleasant and positive, asking if Hank had time to meet and “talk turkey.” The ridiculous term obscured the deep concern Hank knew was behind it, but there was no more time to avoid taking stock. 

Pausing to dig a knuckle into the corners of his swollen eyes, he shot a message back. Carl, an early riser like most older folks—or, rather, folks older than Hank—pinged him right away to say he would come down from the house and meet Hank on the practice track.

Sighing, Hank gave a passing thought to grabbing breakfast, but he didn’t want to take bad news on a full stomach. The quality of his diet had nosedived over the past few years. Or maybe it was the rise in quantity; there had been years when he’d counted a few drinks as a full meal. 

On days like today, Hank craved the booze again, even knowing the first sip would make him sick. More likely, he thought, he craved the feeling that pleasant oblivion was just over a nearby threshold—including the possibility of bringing it even closer with a solid hit of perk-up dust.

Instead of dwelling on any of it, he heaved out of bed, took some fruity-ass antioxidant juice cocktail out of the mini fridge, and pulled on a sweatshirt and jeans. In late-September Michigan, it was thankfully cool enough in the morning for long sleeves. Although Hank had fought most of the way to acceptance when it came to his scars, having an excuse to cover himself from neck to ankle remained a comfort. 

He pulled on the pricey Salomon running shoes that were among his few indulgences. Not that he could run a damn yard, but the bastards were comfortable.

The air outside hovered on the upper edge of _crisp_ , feeling almost fragile. The perfect setting for a talk with Carl, who had the finesse to deliver crushing disappointment with a built-in silver lining. He’d missed his calling as a politician—one of those hope-inspiring egalitarian ones. But it could be he was too gentle for even that.

Hank was concerned right away on seeing Carl in his power chair. He’d been using it a lot more recently, and turning his trademark positivity up a few notches every time he did. That overcompensation couldn’t blur the machine out, of course. 

Hank wanted to tell him that there was no shame in needing help, but it would come across as hollow from a guy who’d pointedly chosen to ditch the hospital-issue crutch and struggle along on his swollen foot. 

In truth, the more frequent appearances of Carl’s chair only added to Hank’s feeling of foreboding—a sense that the first domino in a long, long line was about to fall. 

As soon as he hobbled within hearing range, Carl—true to form—looked him up and down with one eyebrow raised and said, “You’re going to undo all of Doctor Fakhoury’s good work if you keep that up.”

“Gotta get back on it sometime,” Hank said, trying to hide his wince every time he put weight on the bad foot.

“That ‘sometime’ typically isn’t two days after the surgery,” Carl said.

“Three days.”

Carl shook his head slowly. “You need one of these.” He tapped the padded armrest of his power chair.

“Over my dead body, jack.”

“I know,” Carl said. “I can see you walking to your own funeral.” There was a slim thread of melancholy running through the words. Carl usually embellished his dark humor with a certain delight, but it seemed this time he couldn’t muster the energy. “You okay to walk?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Hank lied.

Starting on a slow circuit around the track, the tarmac glittering in shifting patches when the sun briefly broke cloud cover, the two men didn’t speak for a while. It was nice to enjoy the day as it warmed up by degrees, listening to the warning rattle of wind through leaves on the cusp of starting their decline.

“Shall I confirm your suspicions?” Carl finally asked.

Hank tamped down a spike of panic. “About what?”

“About Simon.”

Hank sighed and scratched his beard. “Who’d he sign with?”

“Haas, actually,” said Carl. “Is this the point where I say, ‘At least it wasn’t Ferrari?’” Another try for upbeat that missed the mark.

“I guess the team isn’t really the point,” Hank said. “All that matters is ‘not us.’”

Carl cleared his throat. It sounded rattly and wet, startling.

Hank looked over, but Carl was staring ahead at the track’s first curve. 

He stroked a sagging patch underneath his chin before saying, “If the books are correct, we can hold out one more season. Twenty-twenty is a nice round number for the end of an era, yes?”

By then, bitterness had crept into his voice.

Hank had anticipated the news, but it still hit him like a gut punch. His fucking toe throbbed. “Even if we cut corners?” he asked. “Suspend engine production?”

Carl gave a firm shake of his head. “I don’t want to suspend production. You’ve got clients, and there may be more on the way.”

“ _Client_ ,” Hank said. “Singular.”

Finally, Carl looked up. “Don’t you want your techs to have jobs as long as possible? Give them some time to plan?”

The fact that Hank hadn’t thought about his techs and builders made him feel horribly ashamed. Never had managed to kick that habit of putting himself first, worrying about his legacy like some aging rock star mulling over a third-tier reunion tour. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, of course.”

Carl nodded. “Then, my question to you is: do you want to call it quits after this year? We’re losing a driver, and we may have lost the other even though he’s still technically in the cockpit.”

Hank had _No_ on the tip of his tongue: the breath ready to push it out, decisive and final, but he stopped himself. “Can I—could I have some time to think about it?”

“Of course, Hank,” Carl told him. “I want you to know that you’re this team’s most valuable asset. Manfred Motors Racing would hardly exist without you. At least not in its current state.”

Seeing as the team was limping along—an embarrassment, an afterthought—that wasn’t much of a compliment.

Carl must have noticed Hank’s reaction, because he followed up with, “And you’re my very dear friend. I hope you’ll continue to be for a long time. Markus is quite fond of you, too.”

“You got a good kid there, Carl,” Hank said with total honesty. “Hell of a mind.” He considered for a second or two sneaking in a joke, but instead he said, “Takes after his dad. You should be proud.”

For the first time, Carl’s smile was warm and unweighed down by worry. “I am. Very much so.”

Grim business out of the way, Carl offered a sumptuous breakfast whipped up by his cook in the estate’s huge kitchen. 

Hank’s stomach was echoing by that point and a plate piled with eggs, toast, bacon, and potatoes sounded incredible, but he still remembered the unpleasant feeling of his gut pressing against the tops of his thighs when he’d bent down to lace his sneakers. 

He begged off in favor of a couple cereal bars and instant coffee in his windowless room. It was the right amount of food to keep him sharp instead of sluggish and full, at least for the time being. 

After all, Hank had a strategist’s mind. He needed time to brainstorm, to find the approach that would draw Connor Stern out of that time-wasting franchise and push him onto the international stage. 

It could be a saving grace for Manfred Racing—and maybe for Hank himself.


	2. Late September and Early October 2019

Just when the season was poised to slip into autumn, Detroit got clobbered with a heat wave that even the lake winds couldn’t touch. Hank remembered these last hurrahs of summer as rare when he was young. Now hardly a year went by without one. 

So, predictably, the days before the team shipped out to Russia were _miserable_. The air was so heavy and wet that points of condensation formed along the walls of Hank’s little room whenever the air conditioner was idle. Which wasn’t often. At times it felt like the whole complex vibrated with the strain of forced air, trying to push the muggy heat out. 

As if the heat wasn’t enough to piss him off, Hank had tried and failed for thirty-six hours to get hold of Gavin. His phone kept kicking straight to voicemail; at a certain point Hank had left so many testy messages that the mailbox had filled up. After that, the calls just disconnected. He’d resorted to bothering Tina and even Carl, asking them for a heads-up if Gavin showed his face at the estate. One or the other would call, maybe even say that Gavin had promised to show up at the practice track in ten minutes, half an hour...but twice Hank had ended up sweating in the empty pit lane, swearing under his breath, alone.

After a couple of days, he stopped trying. Even if he went up to the main house, neither Carl nor Tina could physically hold Gavin there.

It was Thursday morning when Tina found Hank napping on one of the vinyl-covered benches by the assembly floor office, trying to soak in the air conditioning.

When she tapped his bicep, Hank flinched violently enough to dislodge the racing magazine he’d laid over his face to block the light. He swung to a sitting position, muttering, then planted his feet hard on the concrete floor, too groggy for caution. 

The resulting ache in his bad foot traveled all the way up to his teeth. He gripped his knee above the foam boot. “ _Shit...fuck._ ”

Tina was grimacing when he looked up. But she wouldn’t apologize; that wasn’t her style. “Beds, Hank,” she said instead. “Normal people use them. We wouldn’t have this problem if I knocked on your door instead of having to shift you like a wino on a goddamn park bench.”

“Too hot in there,” he said, grateful that every pulse of pain radiating up his leg was slightly less agonizing than the last.

Rolling her eyes, Tina let out a heavy sigh. “So stay in one of Carl’s six hundred guest rooms. Well, five hundred ninety-nine, not counting mine. And don’t tell me it’s hard to get back and forth. You _know_ we’ve got door-to-door golf cart service.”

Despite the throbbing in his foot and the lack of decent sleep, Hank had to crack a smile. Tina gave him a lot of things, but bullshit wasn’t one of them. Neither was _pity_ , and that was even more important. So while he would never tell her he hated staying in the main house because there were _mirrors_ everywhere, he was grateful for the approach.

Tina Chen didn’t offer excuses for herself, either. A couple years back, she’d shattered her left ankle on a bad landing during one of her motocross races. But for two months afterward, she had dragged around the cast like a Looney Tunes ball and chain. No one gave her shit about it, at least not after she’d slammed that heavy plaster monstrosity on their toes as retribution. When Simon said something about re-injuring the ankle, Tina had stomped him again. Hank had to pull her away in the end; no driver was good with a broken foot. 

Hank didn’t plan to step on any toes. But he staunchly refused to use the crutch...or the cane.

He rubbed his eyes, thumbing away bits of crust from the corners. “Did Simon go running?” he asked.

Tina sniffed. “Like a rabbit. Hardly a ‘thank you’ or ‘goodbye.’”

“Well,” Hank said, “I wish him luck.” He didn’t bother hiding his disdain. 

“You never liked him much, anyway,” said Tina.

Hank shook his head. “Kind of a prissy little fucker, to be honest. Too buttoned-up. I hope he makes the guys at Haas iron his underwear.”

Tina threw her head back and laughed. It was a full-throated sound, youthful and clear. “Brutal.”

Shrugging, Hank said, “He’s too German.”

“What the fuck does that mean, ‘too German?’ I seem to recall you telling me a story about some wild night with a guy from Germany way back when. Champagne in the bathtub? Screwing till dawn? Any of this ring a bell?”

“He was _Austrian_ ,” Hank said, playing affronted. Then he winked. “The two _ladies_ were German.”

“You’re a pig, Hank Anderson.”

The words didn’t offend him, but they did rattle down into some hollow spot inside and stick there, making his chest ache. “Pig in recovery,” he corrected, forcing a smile. Heaving to his feet, he asked, “What about _l’enfant terrible_?” 

That was a not-so-private joke about Gavin, stolen straight from a European sporting news headline after the Belgian Grand Prix: 

_“L’Enfant Terrible des É.-U.: James Hunt de Nouveau?”_

The French-language article had compared Gavin to English F1 driver James Hunt, who had been famous in the seventies for his temper tantrums. It was sensationalist and a little unfair after just one incident; Hunt was rude to reporters, fans, and even fellow drivers for _years._ But watching Gavin on CCTV get out of his car, throw his helmet to the ground, and scream at jeering Belgian spectators, Hank could only hope he’d follow Hunt’s example and finally clean up his childish act.

Tina huffed a breath, crossing her arms. “Think he’s still sulking.”

“Obviously. But _where_?” 

“Probably his favorite bar,” she said, a sour look on her face.

Hank fought the urge to slam a fist into his still-aching leg. “It’s eight in the goddamn morning. Is the place even open?”

Shrugging, Tina said, “If not, maybe he’s up at the house sleeping off the hangover.”

“You didn’t pick him up last night?”

“No.”

“Did _anybody_?”

Tina sighed, her shoulders sagging. She looked deflated, or at least getting there fast. “I have no idea. I’m getting kind of sick of babysitting a grown man.”

Hank looked down at his knee and took a deep breath. It really wasn’t fair to push off on Tina all the responsibility of dealing with Gavin’s shit. “Yeah, I know,” he told her. “I’m gonna talk to him.”

Looking back toward the entrance to the assembly floor at the harsh sunlight filling the atrium hall, Tina said, “Got a bad feeling it’s going to take more than talking.”

“Guess I’m making a trip to _Château Carl_ ,” Hank said, struggling to keep weight off his still-smarting foot. “Don’t suppose you’ve got one of those golf carts you mentioned…”

Tina frowned. “Like I would _walk_ down here.”

The day was already roasting hot, unfiltered sun blazing down on the roof of the cart as Tina guided it toward the estate. A wedge of light fell on Hank’s knee, over the track pants, the concentrated heat making his scars itch horribly. Grumbling, he rubbed one sweaty palm over the patch and tried to tuck his leg in further. 

Carl was outside on the sprawling back patio, wearing an honest-to-God smoking jacket. He had to be crazy to sit out in anything more than a t-shirt in full sun, but then old people were always cold. Even in his fifties, Carl had been lean, but now—twenty years on—he was birdlike, more fragile every day. 

As much as Hank could stand to shed a pound or thirty, Carl was shrinking, withering, and it made him terribly uneasy. At least the power chair was nowhere in sight.

Hank disembarked from the cart before it rolled to a complete stop, refusing to show pain when a stumble made him lean on the injured foot. 

Raising both his glass and his eyebrows, Carl said in an amused voice, “To what do we owe the honor of this visit to the old estate? What emergency draws the bear from his cave?”

Tina’s chuckle from behind his back didn’t deter Hank from his grim mission. “Ha, ha,” he said sourly. “Looking for the only driver we have left. Is he here?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Carl said. “I could have Mila look for him.” 

“No,” Hank said. “Don’t bother her.” Carl’s Ukrainian housekeeper was getting up there in years, too. At least, that was the excuse Hank made in his mind. Really, he didn’t want the request to scour the house traced back to him. Mila already disliked him enough. 

She had a right to; Hank had burned that bridge a while back. She was always going on about the old Motherland, how great it had been in Soviet-controlled Ukraine back in the day. Once, Hank had lost his patience and asked why she didn’t just go back. She’d been cold to him ever since. 

He’d made the mistake of bitching about it to Carl, calling Mila a “charity case.” It prompted Carl to launch into a rare scolding, reminding him that _he_ had essentially been a charity case, too. Hank had still been fuming, but he’d known enough to shut up at that point. Carl had plucked him out of one of the lowest points of his life and forced him onto the straight and narrow again. 

Even today, Hank figured he must have been a saint in a former life. Not one but _two_ benefactors had hauled him out of a cesspit of his own making and given him another chance. First, Leopold Kamski, who had nurtured enough faith in Hank’s racing career to pull him off the track and send him to rehab—and to keep a space on his team for when he returned. Then Carl: after the crash, when addiction had swallowed Hank’s life again. 

He’d managed to make Leo proud, paid back his generosity many times over. If he couldn’t do the same for Carl, the back half of his life would be nothing but a pointless waste.

Carl’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Our Gavin is having a tough time of it.”

“That’s an understatement,” Hank said.

“Tell me, what do you think Gavin needs?” asked Carl. “What can we give him?”

Tina piped up from the shade of the cart. “Other than a swift kick in the ass?”

A faint, indecipherable smile on his face, Carl said, “Hank?”

Hank wiped sweat from his forehead. “Well, she’s not wrong. But...I don’t know? Therapy? Put him under house arrest? Shit. What did you do when Markus acted up?”

“I hesitate to compare the two—” Carl stopped when he heard the patio door open. 

Hank expected Mila, but instead Gavin poked his disheveled head out. 

He froze when he caught sight of Hank.

“Hey!” Hank called, limping toward the door. 

Gavin slammed it and dashed off into the house’s interior again.

“God _dammit_.” Hobbling over the paving stone, Hank tried to follow. If it was going to be a game of chase, he was as good as out already. Still, he pulled open the door and stepped into the large, square mud room with its coats hung on wall hooks and boots lined up along the baseboard. Past it, the kitchen was empty and still held the heavy smell of breakfast.

A crackling rumble split the silence.

“Hank!” Tina called from the open door.

Hank had known exactly what was going on when he’d heard the noise. Gavin had made a run for the garage and was revving up his shitty muscle car.

Sometime between the grands prix in the U.K. and Germany, right in the middle of the summer, Gavin had bought a God-awful-ugly, cherry red Corvette and asked to keep it at Carl’s. It was the kind of machine Hank associated with a poor man’s mid-life crisis: cheap and showy. Carl, because he was Carl, had laughed off Hank’s offended protests and let Gavin use a berth in the estate’s ten-car garage.

At first, when Gavin had starting taking the ‘Vette out on the winding country roads crisscrossing the seventeen thousand acres that belonged to the Manfred Corporation, Hank thought he was practicing, shaking things up. But his performance on the track got worse, if anything. Plus, Carl started getting noise complaints from some of the employees who rented houses close to corporate headquarters. One of them even said that someone in a red car had slammed into her mailbox, totally destroying it, before backing up and driving away. Gavin, of course, denied it. But a paint-flecked dent in the Corvette’s front fender told a different story. Hank had finally gotten Carl to order Gavin to tone it down. 

Gavin agreed, and started taking the car no farther than a crappy juke joint in Macomb, where he usually got himself shitfaced. Tina had picked him up at closing time once or twice, and so had a couple of the engineers, but Hank refused. The stupid bastard could sleep it off in a cow field for all he cared. 

As Hank stormed out onto the patio again, his foot already in agony, Carl said, “Just let him go.”

“Not this time,” Hank said between clenched teeth. He pointed at Tina. “Get me to the garage.”

Carl raised a withered hand. “Hank—”

“No, Carl. Enough is enough. I’m through with this bullshit, and he’s got to understand that.” The golf cart listed heavily to the side as Hank sat hard on the plastic seat.

“Take the Maserati,” Carl told him.

“I’m taking the Aston,” Hank said as Tina floored the gas. The cart’s tiny motor strained under their weight, passing Carl at a pathetic pace. He had a mimosa in a champagne flute clutched between two thin fingers and watched as they drove away. 

Hank forced himself not to look back.

Through his fury, though, he still felt the little surge of excitement. Same as it always was, every time, when he was about to get behind the wheel. And Carl’s brand new 2020 Aston-Martin DBS Superleggera was a sweet machine. It was done up with a buttery tan leather interior, the paint job an understated pine color that hewed tantalizingly close to the old British Racing Green. 

The Aston wasn’t and never would be a Formula One car; there was no need to wrestle the wheel like a steam valve...not that Hank’s muscles were up to the task these days, anyway. Although it hugged the road like a race car, it did so on a cushiony suspension, its interior too quiet to hear shrieking tires. 

An old man’s ride, but it could still blow the doors off Gavin’s domestic hunk of junk. 

Hank made sure to get out of the cart on his good leg, making right for the wall-mounted key safe. He opened it with a thumb on the reader and took the key fob off its hook. 

Tina closed the safe behind him. “Don’t kill yourself, Hank.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Or Gavin!” Tina shouted. “Even if he deserves it. He’s the only driver we’ve got.”

If she said anything else, Hank didn’t hear. He had settled into the Aston’s bucket seat, surrounded by the smell of new leather At the touch of a button, the car’s engine rumbled awake. 

Hank drew his right knee up toward his chest and put his left foot on the brake. His former coach and manager Leopold Kamski had forced him to learn the pedals with each foot separately, as well as with both. It had turned out to serve him well when F1 cars shifted over from manual gearboxes to semi-automatic in the late eighties and early nineties. Old man Kamski always seemed to have a vantage point on the future, beyond what was merely in front of his nose—something Hank never managed to acquire. 

He shifted and gunned the Aston out of the garage. It flew arrow-silent and bullet-fast down the long drive, eating its two-mile length in seconds. Hank barely tapped the brake before launching into the road proper. Through a tunnel of maples and oaks, the two-lane strip looked empty in both directions. Squinting, Hank caught sight of dust settling back onto the road, filtered through thin beams of sunlight. He turned the wheel left and peeled out after it.

When the fringe of trees thinned out to reveal sun-drenched countryside, something metallic caught the light, then dipped behind the rise of a hill that obscured the road leading to the corporate plaza. Hank let his foot off the gas, looking for that glint again. For once, the unending cloudless blue of the sky worked in his favor. 

Another flash showed, short but brilliant as a searchlight, clearly headed toward the office complex. When Hank stomped on the gas, the Aston leap forward, its tires giving a brief squeal of protest. Maybe he didn’t have an eidetic memory, but familiarity had sketched out a pretty good map of the area in his brain. If Gavin was going where he seemed to be, Hank could corner him inside the semicircle of Corporate Drive by skimming up a two-lane access road, called Walnut Street, which skirted the back end of the complex. 

And _if_ Gavin was roaring around Corporate Drive, Hank was going to knock a few teeth down his throat. It was a weekday; people were working in the company offices. Gavin could easily take horseshoe curve too fast and run down some suit-and-tie on his lunch break. 

Hank _should_ have gotten more hands-on with the kid back in Belgium—slapped him across his smart-ass mouth or at least given him a good, jaw-rattling shake. Sure, Hank was quick to raise his voice, yell at a driver for some dumbass move, but he’d never been physically rough on anyone.

But as he got to the end of his rope, the possibility seemed to grow in his mind.

At a T-junction, he spun the wheel and launched the Aston up the incline of Fairview Road. Near its end, Fairview tapered into two lanes and spilled into a switchback around a small creek. Over a bridge, it dead-ended at Walnut Street. 

Hank rode the tight turns smoothly, with a single finger guiding the wheel, then pulled it hard to the left, sending gravel shooting out from under the tires and into the water rushing below the bridge. He gunned it up the street until the top of the first building came into view, then hit the brakes. It wasn’t a second too soon, either, as Gavin’s bright blue Corvette had just turned onto Walnut after slipping between two of the low buildings and onto the access path that ran behind the semicircle.

The two seconds it took Gavin to spot the Aston proved to be enough. The Corvette came to a rough stop, its tires smoking. 

Hank could almost hear the car clicking into reverse as he passed, his own engine whisper-quiet. 

Gavin got two feet into a back-up before the Aston was blocking the return path to Corporate Drive. He shifted again and the engine roared, the tires fighting for traction to get going forward again. 

But it was too late; Hank tapped the shifter to reverse and floored it, dragging the car in a hard loop to cut the Corvette off. Its low front bumper stopped no more than five inches from the Aston’s passenger-side door. 

His anger flaring higher, Hank punched the ignition button. He was out of the car and stalking toward the Corvette, ignoring the pain in his foot, before the engine settled.

Gavin, his eyes wide, bailed out and tried to book it on foot before Hank got hold of the back of his t-shirt and yanked him off balance. With a choked little noise, arms flailing, he toppled backward and struck the edge of the car door hard with one shoulder blade. The door slammed shut with Gavin’s weight against it. He got his footing and tried to bolt again, but some of the fabric of his shirt was caught in the door and he only managed to rip the neckline with a sharp sound that echoed through the complex.

Hank wrapped a huge hand around his throat but didn’t use much pressure. 

Gavin was essentially trapped, anyway. Still, his eyes bugged out and his hands flew up, fingertips trying to pry the hand away.

“The _fuck_ are you doing?” Hank shouted, giving him a slight shake. “There are people walking around over there! You can’t just go blazing up the goddamn street! I should have had that piece of shit impounded long ago!” He could feel Gavin swallow hard underneath his palm. That made him pull the hand away and regret everything immediately.

Gavin’s eyes were bloodshot and ringed with purple, his skin sallow underneath a few days’ worth of stubble. The shirt he wore was filthy, sprinkled with pinhole burns from cigarette ash. A sharp, unwashed smell rose from his skin and into the fiendishly hot air.

“Shit,” Hank muttered, his rage draining away. He half turned away, squinting into the sunlight.

Gavin slumped against the side of his car. It was probably sizzling hot by now. “Hank, man, I just—I don’t know what my problem is.”

Hank spun to face him again, leveling a finger at the space right between his eyes, the scar on the bridge of his nose. “Bullshit. You know _exactly_ what’s going on. You just don’t want to face up to it.”

“I’m working it out,” Gavin said.

“Oh, horseshit,” Hank shot back. “Or if you are, it’s not working. Blazing around in this tank, getting drunk off your ass? Shouting at fans? You’re turning into a fucking monster! Whatever happened in Mexico City, it _changed_ you, Gavin. You’ve _got_ to see it.” 

Gavin sniffed hard, wrinkling his nose and looking away. 

Hank stepped closer again, leaning in to make sure he paid attention. His voice was a low, wicked hiss. “Or maybe it’s just the real you coming out.” He cuffed Gavin lightly on the side of his head, making him flinch and clutch at his temple as if Hank had really hurt him. “Huh? Maybe you’re a piece of shit deep down and the crash just knocked out the part of you that cared?”

“Don’t have to be a goddamn saint to get the job done.”

“Except that’s the problem, Gavin,” Hank said. “You’re _not_ getting the job done. You get out on the track and it all goes to hell.”

Gavin sneered. “I haven’t qualified below top ten on the grid all year!”

“But you lose it when the pressure’s on!” Qualifying times meant a lot more in modern F1 than it used to, when overtaking was more common, but Hank couldn’t help comparing Gavin’s slow, shaky, cautious races to Connor Stern’s bold moves in his mind. “Qualifying doesn’t mean shit if you can’t deliver. Admit it.”

“Admit what?”

Hank clenched his fist. “That you’re scared. The crash in Mexico _scared_ you. And you’re flailing because of it.”

Scowling, Gavin said, “Fine. I’m scared. What do you want me to do? Go to fucking therapy?”

“Yeah, if it takes that.”

“I don’t believe in that shit,” Gavin said. “All they do is try and make you blame your problems on your dad or something."

“Pretty sure your dad wasn’t on the track in Mexico,” Hank snapped.

“Fuck you.”

“I’d say ‘fuck you,’ back, but you’re doing that all on your own.” Slapping one broad, flat palm down on his thigh, Hank said, “I want you to stop running away. _Look_ at what happened. If that means therapy, then yeah, get therapy. You _know_ Carl will pay for it—whatever you need. If it means pills to keep your head straight—”

“No pills,” Gavin cut in. “They’ll affect my performance.”

Hank threw his hands up, feeling like his guts were knotted up. “Earth to Gavin! Your performance is _already_ affected! How much worse can it get?”

He could see Gavin’s jaw muscles moving as he clenched and unclenched his teeth. For a couple of seconds, he didn’t speak. Then, much softer: “ _You_ didn’t take meds.”

The pitiless sun seemed to hit every surface and bounce right back into Hank’s eyes. His head was starting to throb and he could feel heavy beads of sweat running between his shoulder blades and dropping to soak into his waistband. The ragged scars on his leg, trapped against dark fabric that drew heat right out of the air, itched almost to the point of pain. 

“Oh, yes, I did,” he said. “Except mine was the kind you buy in little baggies and cut with a razor blade. Not to mention enough Johnnie Walker to fill a tanker truck or two. Which seems like it’s getting to be _your_ medication of choice right about now. Let me tell you, son—that sure didn’t win me any races. All I bought myself was a forfeited season and two months of rehab in some swampy Florida hell. You might be getting off on your James Hunt act right now, being the bad boy for attention, but people got sick of that. They stopped covering him and inviting him places.”

“Hunt pulled himself out of it,” Gavin said. “Without rehab or meds or whatever. People _respected_ him.”

“You forgot the last part,” Hank said, his energy flagging and his fury quickly subsiding into despair. “The part where he died of a massive heart attack at forty-five because of all the shit he put his body through. You're thirty-three; ten years isn't that much time. Hell, I’ve got less than that on Hunt, and it’s a goddamn miracle I’m still on my feet.” He took a breath, pausing, scrounging strength. “I could keel over at any minute. All because I made the mistake of caring about this sport more than I cared about myself. Getting drunk isn’t the same as _being a drunk_. You don’t get to be _the best_ if you’re not at _your_ best. But it’s a goddamn fine line. Do you get it?”

Gavin looked away, back toward Corporate Drive and the couple of people who had stopped to gawk. Both turned at once, doing a terrible job of pretending they were only passing by. 

Hank passed the back of one hand across his forehead. It came away dripping with greasy sweat. He flicked a few drops away and wiped what remained on his pants, disgusted. Not all of that disgust was physical. Hank knew part of what he’d told Gavin was hypocrisy, even a flat-out lie. There had been times in his life, fresh out of rehab, when he’d almost convinced himself he could push aside his drive to win and settle for health, happiness, contentment. Maybe it was the fact that he never fully believed it that had put those things out of reach. Even telling the lie was selfish: _fix yourself, keep serving the team, keep serving_ me.

Maybe it would be better for Manfred Motors to fold, to put down that ugly grasping for good.

Hank sighed. “Fuck it,” he whispered.

He limped back around to the driver’s door and climbed inside the Aston again, his t-shirt soaked and sticking to the leather. Hauling his bad leg out of the way with a hand tucked behind his knee, he slapped the ignition and peeled out. Frigid air from the vents blasted in his face, but still took a full five minutes to feel cool against skin heated with shame and rage. 

The idea of returning to his windowless room to do battle with the humidity seemed far worse than a cool shower at the estate, mirrors or no mirrors. He parked the Aston, ignoring its dust-coated tires and underside.

Mila was in the kitchen, but she walked out as soon as she saw Hank. 

Teeth clenched, he got his own glass from the cabinet, filled it with water twice, and drained it both times.

Instead of taking the sweeping “nautilus” staircase that was the showpiece of the house, Hank opted for a much more modest set of back steps that led upstairs from the kitchen. He was way past done with grand entrances of all kinds...and at this point had little hope for a grand exit when the time came.

Ducking into two or three guest suites revealed enormous mirrored panels in each, like a damn carnival funhouse. _Complete with freak show_ , he thought, giving up and ducking into an _en-suite_ where at least he’d only have to see himself from the waist up. He kicked off the soggy clothes like they were radioactive and stood under a cool spray until his skin pebbled up with gooseflesh. 

Carl had outfitted every bathroom with Turkish cotton towels big enough to cover a twin bed with room left over. They could easily be knotted over the round belly that seemed to have appeared overnight. Everything about Hank was thicker these days: his waistline, the hair on his forearms and chest. He’d been able to keep the hair on his head, more or less, but the ashy blond curls that had tumbled wild around his shoulders and sprung free from his helmet were almost all white now. They’d lost their shine, too, long ago gone rough and wiry with the texture of half-charred kindling.

It was fitting, in a way. Hank himself was half-charred. All of the hair follicles within the jagged bounds of his scars had been burned away, leaving the skin bare and pitted as a moonscape. He had noticed his unburnt flesh beginning to sag, now with a queasy-feeling slide when he ran his hands over it. But his scarred places were still tight after all these years. They limited his movement at the best of times, went scaly and painfully dry after exposure to water or cold. The texture reminded him of tissue paper, as if the dozens of grafts weren’t human skin at all.

Hank winced as he dabbed thick lotion onto the patch of scarring on his belly and chest. It measured nearly a foot across at his hip, tapering into a slim channel underneath his right collarbone before flaring out again along the side of his neck and stopping below his ear. His right hand and forearm had sustained the worst of it, where the burning fuel had spattered and set the sleeve of his jumpsuit aflame. Or so the doctors had theorized.

Those same doctors were shocked that he’d been able to keep all of his fingers. His right hand had looked like raw hamburger for months—not a single millimeter of skin untouched. The nails on the third and fourth fingers had never grown back. Above his wrist was a motley of damaged flesh, patchworked together with unburned parts. 

Hank’s single birthmark, a light brown patch on his right bicep, had been spared because the flames had crept up the underside of his arm. Of all of the pain he remembered—the delirious, head-swimming, eye-watering agony of debridement and grafting—it had been the blistered curve of his underarm as it cracked and mended and cracked again that had brought him closest to putting a bullet in his skull.

These days, he could raise his arm just fine. An operation ten years back had re-sculpted some of the webbed tissue limiting range of motion. Not that Hank had any plans to pitch for the major leagues, but it was nice not to have to struggle with shirts anymore. He rubbed a little of the lotion into the hairless swath of armpit. No more sweat glands: possibly the only upside to third degree burns.

Looking away from the mirror as soon as he could, Hank capped the tube and tossed it onto the marble countertop. The bathrobe hanging on the back of the door covered up what mattered. 

Hank scooped up his damp hair and ponytailed it with a rubber band fished out of his pocket. He needed a haircut, but _what Hank needed_ was pretty much constantly in the back of his mind, easily forgotten.

***

Later, Hank sat in the informal dining room soaking in the vigorous air conditioning. Something in the kitchen smelled incredible, but he had yet to gather enough energy to investigate.

He heard footsteps on the back stairway, and looked over to see Tina holding the banister and swinging around to skip the last two steps. She landed light on her feet. 

_Oh, to be young_.

“God, you look like a rich housewife at a spa retreat,” she said. “All you’re missing are the cucumber slices over your eyes.”

Hank waved her off. “Not pretty enough.”

“You find Gav?”

“Sure did.”

She toyed idly with her ponytail, the end slightly greasy from being touched. She was unsettled, and Hank felt another wave of regret at fobbing Gavin off on her for so long. “Make any progress?” she asked.

Shaking his head, Hank looked at the table. “I have no idea.”

Tina put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe _I_ should go to a spa,” she said. “I need a fucking break. Though, I swear half those places are a front.”

“What do you mean?” Hank asked, raising his head.

“They’re places to dry out,” said Tina.

He snorted. “Nobody’s gonna get sober at a fucking spa. Softening the blow keeps you thinking your bullshit works. There’s only one thing you need if you’re serious, and it ain’t hot stone massage.”

“Yeah?” Tina asked, plopping into one of the lucite chairs, “What’s that?”

Hank cleared his throat and looked away, speaking with total sincerity. “Shame,” he said.

Tina fell silent. She wasn’t addicted; didn’t have the personality for it. She couldn’t know. Gavin, on the other hand… Trying to reach the kid was like pounding on the reverse side of a mirror. 

At least they were close to shipping out for the next race, and hopefully for cooler climates. Hank wondered if Carl had told Mila where the team was going. Hank hadn’t known what to expect from the Black Sea resort city of Sochi the first time he’d gone. The name brought up vague memories of ski tournaments, but he’d been surprised to learn it had essentially been the Riviera of the USSR. From the fifties through the seventies, beachfront hotels and subtropical temperatures drew hundreds of thousands of Soviet holidaymakers every summer. After everything went tits-up with the collapse, the whole republic suffered, but Sochi got a sweet influx of around fifty billion to do it up grand for the 2014 Winter Olympics. 

These days, millions of upper-class Russians still flocked there for a patriotic luxury getaway, and the _Autodrom_ had a state-of-the-art track that kept profits rolling in even after the end of vacation season.

As much as he looked forward to _anything_ lately, Hank was keen to go. 

Mila re-entered the dining nook carrying something breadlike, the plate still giving off steam. Scent filled the room right away—rich and savory—perking up every wasted nerve in Hank’s overtaxed body. 

It was some sort of baked fish in phyllo dough, heavily spiced. Hank felt like he could kiss Mila’s sour face.

She skirted his chair and set the plate down in front of Tina. “You want salad?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Tina said. “That’d be great. Thanks, Mila.”

“Any more of that?” Hank asked.

Mila shot him a glance full of pure disdain. “Jamal is in the kitchen. You can ask him.”

Tina’s eyes went wide, but she stared at resolutely down at her plate as Mila walked away, her ample rear swaying.

“Guess where we’re going this weekend,” Hank called after her. “Having a little vacation in Sochi. Bring something back for you?” 

Mila turned, frowning. “Is _Sah-chi_ , not _Soh-chi_ ,” she said. “And I have everything I need.”

That time, Tina looked at Hank, raising her eyebrows. 

Again, Hank’s ire deflated. “I know, I know. She’s just such a—” He gave up and sighed, his chin nearly hitting his chest.

He’d opened his mouth to say something to Tina when he caught the sound of jingling keys down the hallway. 

It was rhythmic, fast: clearly someone walking quickly. Couldn’t be Carl, then. 

A second or two later, Markus strode in, a pair of Ray-Bans perched on his forehead and the key to Carl’s Mercedes utility van in his palm. His usual grin was missing, though.

Hank understood at once.

The only time that van saw any use was when Carl went somewhere with his power chair. Frailty scared Hank, and it had frightened him more and more in the years since his accident. Few young men get a glimpse into their future, a reminder of the helplessness to come. It wasn’t even the state of dependence that put him so on edge, but the idea that he would end up there one day while he was still marking time, waiting for the second pinnacle of his life. 

Alone in his bed sometimes, the thought would come to him that there was no next stroke of greatness waiting. The infection had begun to spread to his daylight hours, too, lending them a shaky restlessness that spurred his mind forward too fast for his feet to keep up. Those he dragged on purpose, trying to buy himself time to figure out if the vista of his future opened up to anything more, or was just a painting over a blank wall.

“Why the long faces?” Markus asked, a halfhearted stab at humor. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tina said. “Hank, where should we start?”

“I know,” Markus said, setting the keys down on the tabletop. His sunglasses were folded and set beside them shortly afterward. 

“Your dad seeing the doctor?” Hank asked.

“Yeah,” said Markus, staring at the keys and shades. “I’m supposed to pick him up in an hour.” After a few moments of silence, he looked up at Hank. “I’ve got some...interesting news for you, Hank. Care to take a walk?”

“Hey!” Tina said. “I’m part of this team, too.”

Even though the food smelled incredible, and Hank was curious, his appetite was waning fast. He waved Markus off. “Too damn hot out there,” he said. “And Tina’s right. She deserves to know what’s going on.”

After another cautious second, Markus took a seat and briefed Tina on the IndyCar race and Connor Stern.

“Okay,” Hank said, brushing a loose strand of hair out of his face, “none of that is news. So what else you got?”

“Well, Doubting Thomas, if you let me finish—I got on the phone with Jeff Fowler from Fowler Racing.” He sat back in the chair until the plastic creaked and pointed a finger at Hank. “I know, a millennial actually having a phone conversation. But the guy’s not as much of a hardass as he seemed on race day. Said Connor gave him the low-down on your history, Hank, and he’s interested in talking to you again.”

Tina, who had her elbows on the table and was leaning forward, wrapped up in Markus’s words, flipped one hand to the side to tap Hank’s arm. “This ‘Connor’ guy as good as he says?” she asked.

“He’s got potential, sure.” Hank felt cautious enthusiasm and scolded himself for it. The day had opened up a well inside that he stuffed full of bitterness just to stop the hopeless echoes.

“Come on,” Markus said. “You saw him drive. You can’t deny you were excited.”

Hank huffed. “I don’t know. Are you looking to place Connor Stern with us for the good of the team? Or to prop up your little side gig?”

When Markus flinched, hurt showing plain on his face, Hank knew he’d gone too far.

“I’m thinking about my dad,” Markus said in a brittle voice. “And _only_ my dad. This is his dream, his biggest one. I don’t want to watch it get flushed away. Do you?”

Shaking his head, Hank said, “I’m sorry, kid. That was a shitty thing to say. It’s been a rough morning, but it’s no excuse.” 

“It’s okay,” Markus said. “We’re all kind of shaken up.”

Hank felt the beginnings of drowsiness seep into his mind and his muscles. The bathrobe was soft and just warm enough. Maybe he would have a nap before going back to the engineering complex. “Give me the number,” he said. “I’ll call Fowler. See what we can do.” 

It was nice to see Markus smile—and Tina, too. 

“Just don’t hang everything on it,” Hank said. “It’s too early.”

Tina nodded, with Markus following suit. 

His hunger gone and fatigue encroaching fast, Hank excused himself for a lie down. As he walked up the back stairs, he could hear Tina and Markus talking quickly, but he couldn’t make out any of the words and he was too tired to care.

***

Two days later, Hank found himself on his phone by the edge of the blue-black water near Sochi’s Imeretinskaya Embankment at twilight. With the toe of his boot, he tapped larger rocks into the surf, its white foam tips barely visible as the last smudges of blue day faded behind him. The sea was noisy, but at least the music and chatter from the boardwalk had faded. 

Despite the tenor of their first meeting, Hank discovered with relief that Jeff Fowler knew exactly which side his bread was buttered on. 

“Oh, hell, it’s a rich-boy hobby,” Fowler was saying. “Indy just happens to be the one _this_ rich boy picked.”

“Well, Mister Fowler,” Hank said, “I’d be lying if I told you Formula One wasn’t just the same these days.”

“On a larger scale, sure,” Fowler said, then turned away from the phone to cough. “We’re talking capital-B billions. Now, I may not know all that much about the sport when it comes down to brass tacks, but I assure you: I understand what’s at stake. Your young associate, Markus, he made quite an impression. Had a presentation and all, like he was selling me vacation property.”

Hank winced and chewed the inside of his cheek. Markus’s investment in all of this was flattering, but the eager-beaver act could be grating. “I’ll have a talk with him about speaking on his dad’s behalf.”

“No, no. Cut the kid a break,” Fowler insisted. A little more quietly, he said, “Reminds me of Connor in a lot of ways. They both admire you very much, I can tell you that.”

Hank stumbled, nearly toppling off-balance on the shifting pebbles. The night was chilly, but suddenly he felt far too warm for the jacket he wore. “Despite my best efforts,” he managed. 

That drew a laugh from Fowler. “Young people are the best at fooling themselves,” he said. “I offer you that from one abrasive old bastard to another. They only take away what they want from anything. Too dumb to be cynical yet.”

Reluctantly, Hank let himself laugh, too. “Better watch out, there, Jeff. You’ll put me in serious danger of starting to like you.”

“Heaven forbid,” Fowler said, chuckling into another cough. “Yeah, Con had stars in his eyes. Sat me down and gave me your whole life story from memory. Uh, embellished, I’m sure.”

“No doubt.”

“Look, Hank. May I call you ‘Hank?’” asked Fowler. 

“Sure thing.”

“I’m going to talk to the boy again, but I just wanted to talk to you today to let you know I’m not the one you have to convince. And Connor isn’t either. I know he’d jump at the chance, and I’d be a fool to hold him back.”

Hank sighed. Darkness had rushed in over the water and stood like a wall in front of him, the watery boardwalk lights doing little to dispel it. A cool gust of wind raised the ends of his hair and twined around his neck, making him shiver. 

“His mother, right?” he asked Fowler. “That was the reason he gave me back in Monterey.”

The creaking of a leather chair could be heard as Fowler shifted in his seat. An uncomfortable sound to fill an uncomfortable silence. “Yes, indeed,” he finally said. “Amanda, well, she’s a force of nature. She feels like she needs to protect Chris and Con, especially since Michael passed.” He paused a moment, then added, “He was the boys’ father.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Hank told him. It was a good, catch-all response. Hank himself hadn’t stuck around to hear condolences when his old man bit the dust. _If_ any had been forthcoming, Hank probably would have said, truthfully, that he was glad the bastard was dead. 

Fowler hummed his agreement. “Mike was a good guy. He really was. Crazy about those boys, too. Took our mom a little while to get her head around the fact her baby girl married a white man, but she came around. Mainly because Mike loved the kids so much. It was him who first put Connor behind the wheel. I thought my sister was going to serve him divorce papers the next day.”

“Well, she lets him drive for _you_.” 

“I’m family,” said Fowler. “I’ve got a feeling you’ll have to make a better pitch than your friend Markus did. But for what it’s worth, I’m on your side. Connor’s got great things ahead.”

Hank kicked one more pebble, losing sight of it immediately in the thick dark. His healing foot had started to throb again. “I sure hope so, Jeff.”

Tapping the _end call_ icon, Hank let his arm drop. Holding the phone to his ear had put strain on the scar tissue around his elbow. He needed to go back to the hotel and put more lotion on. But little fingers of salt water were curling underneath his bootsoles and slipping out again between the pebbles, trying to draw him out. The starless night was so black that the line between sea and sky had disappeared, all of it now a velvety void that whispered in metronomic time. 

Hank closed his eyes and hauled in lungfuls of the sea air. If he stood there long enough, he imagined he could just melt into the tide, worn away like sand or sugar, with no one the wiser. Instead, he opened his eyes and looked up the deserted embankment. Somewhere nearby, a car blasting Russian hip hop swerved into hearing range and then pulled away. The boardwalk lights shone golden in the deep quiet that followed. 

Tucking his phone into his back pocket, Hank walked toward them without a glance back at the sea.

***

Although the nights grew chilly, the days in Sochi were still pleasant enough as October approached. It also looked like the mild weather had kept a few more tourists than usual in town, because the stands were close to full, rumbling with chatter and giving off sparks of light as members of the crowd held up their China-made iPhones. They were probably snapping selfies rather than taking pics or video of the track—something to put on Instagram, whatever the fuck _that_ was. Manfred Motors Racing had social media accounts wherever you could have one, but Hank sure as shit didn’t take care of that angle. 

Simon Hauptmann hadn’t come to Russia with the Haas team. One of their drivers was retiring at the end of the season, which probably meant Simon would slide neatly into his place. The guy on his way out, Daniel Herveux, was thirty-seven; getting up there in age for any sport. A driver could hang out a long time in F1, past the point where basketball or football stars would have burned out, but the strain did eventually take its toll. Herveux hadn’t pulled any World Championships, but he’d won a respectable number of races and would probably either slide into management or scoot off to his homeland to open a driving school and get fat. Next season, barely anyone would remember his name.

Hank’s rational mind knew it was idiotic to yearn for a final bright flash of fame. Even if Anderson Engines took off, even if the product edged out a Honda or a Renault engine in one or two of the surviving teams on the grid, his name would only draw respect within racing’s tightest inner circle. Drivers got the highest level of recognition; Ayrton Senna, Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher—these were household names in many countries. Hank had raced with some of them and held his own.

But drivers come and go. Teams have staying power, and the longer they last, the more top-level talent they are able to draw in. Ferrari would likely still be Ferrari in twenty years. In that same span, if only Manfred could hold up, Hank could carve his mark into every facet of the sport. He could cling more solidly to memory, his star still brilliant even as his life faded and passed. 

Still, many years of peaks that failed to stack up and troughs that each seemed deeper than the last had made him pragmatic. Maybe even a bit of a fatalist. 

One of the counselors who worked with addicts during Hank’s second go-round in rehab had been a college classics professor. That was, until the booze had washed through and left him jobless, divorced, and broke. 

He started off every goddamn session he led with a quote from some ancient Greek guy named Epicurus. Something along the lines of _Don’t spoil what you have by wishing for more; everything you have now is something you once wished for._ It had stuck in Hank’s mind all these years because he distinctly remembered thinking the quote was stupid and the counselor was full of shit.

He’d always wanted to ask the guy if he’d wished specifically for a bald spot and a room full of burnouts back when he was still on the sauce. But thinking about him _or_ his goddamn quote was a reminder that Hank would probably never again have one-tenth of what he’d lost. 

_The crash, it should have…He should have..._

He couldn’t finish the thought, even in his head. 

Instead, he walked to the pit lane, where Gavin was sitting, suited up and helmeted, inside the number thirty-six car. Bright red—his number painted in black and yellow along the bargeboards, the Manfred Motors logo atop the chassis and on each front wing. Oh, and the sprawling Anderson logo across the rear wing. It was a beautiful machine. 

Hank kept fanning the tiny spark of hope that the qualifying rounds had kindled, despite his better judgment. Gavin always qualified well but dropped the ball during the race itself. As he rolled out to take his place at fourth position on the grid, that spark hissed and smoked. 

“You’ve got this, kid,” Hank said into the mic by his cheek, hoping he sounded upbeat. “No Simon to slow you down or show you up. The grid is yours. Challenge these fuckers.”

“Roger, ground control,” Gavin said back. The words were terse, strained, and there was no way to tell if it was because of nerves or the still-fragile truce between them after the dust-up earlier in the week.

Hank edged up to the bank of screens as the cars pulled into place one after another. Something twinged inside his chest as he looked over a lineup that shimmered with the heat of revving engines. The tarmac below his feet rumbled, but the usual excitement failed to dispel the tight feeling every time he took a breath.

Coming up from out of nowhere after a mostly unremarkable season, number seventy-one had qualified in pole position. The black car with its vivid blue markings idled there now.. The last time Hank had seen its driver, Leopold Kamski Junior, youngest son of Hank’s old team manager, was in 1997 at Leopold Senior’s Herefordshire estate. Leo the younger had been no older than two, only just getting on his feet without help. A cute kid: round-faced, chubby, and blond, though in recent pictures his hair looked darker.

Back then, of course, it was far too early to tell if the boy would go on to have any interest or talent for racing. But Leo Senior hoped, because that was what he did. Up until the end.

He’d be damn proud to see his youngest out there starting the Russian Grand Prix at the age of twenty-three—despite the vanity project his older son had made of the Kamski team name. Hank had also spoken directly to Elijah Kamski for the last time in 1997. Not that he got much speaking in. Eighteen-year-old Elijah had screamed at him through tears, accusing him of killing his father.

Finally, the nurses had dragged the boy out of the room. Hank had been in too much pain to offer him any sympathy. Besides, he had to wonder why Elijah cared so much after Leopold’s death when he’d spent the previous four or five years spurning his dad at every turn. It had been one of the great tragedies of Old Leo’s life that he could never figure out where he’d gone wrong with Elijah. He’d said as much to Hank on many occasions. 

It was too simplistic to say Elijah was just a bad seed. He may have been spoiled, as first children usually are, but Leopold had always held him to account when he fucked up. 

The old man had sacrificed a lot for Hank, and maybe that was what Elijah couldn’t forgive. Looking from the outside, maybe it was understandable: Old Leo shouldered the blame for what happened to Hank that day in Austria.

It made a twisted sort of sense that Elijah would wonder, then, _Would my father have killed himself if I was the one who got hurt?_

Hank closed his eyes as the flag went down and—against the recommendations of good ol’ Epicurus—wished that things were different.

The race started promising, as they often did. Gavin held in fourth until halfway through the lap count, not taking any chances but also effectively blocking other cars trying to pass. 

Hank’s heart leapt into his throat when Gavin’s voice hit his earpiece: “Gonna try for an overtake on nine.”

“Good,” Hank said right away. “If you don’t make it, hang back. Try to catch his slipstream. Eleven is a bitch.”

“I know!” Gavin shouted. “I’ve been driving it!”

Gritting his teeth, Hank resisted the urge to yell something back. So far, nothing was out of whack. He didn’t want to disrupt the balance and tip Gavin’s mood into blackness. Once things got dark in his head, there was no dragging him out. 

For now, he kept his wits. Overtaking on corner nine was a good choice. The car in third belonged to Leo Jr.’s teammate, Nigel “Nines” Connolly. South African by birth, Irish by blood. The only thing Hank knew about him—the guy was famously closed-lipped and private—was that he was the tallest Formula One driver since Hank himself, standing at just over six-foot-three.

That was the extent of Hank’s knowledge about the man personally, but he was well aware of Connolly’s movements and preferences on the track. 

So was Gavin, hence the choice for an overtake. Connolly liked to hug the inside barrier wall, even on inverse corners. Both nine and ten curved in toward the center of the track. Connolly’s habit meant there would be plenty of room to slip around the outside before gunning it toward the right-angled eleventh corner.

Hank leaned in, squinting at the monitor, as the lead cars rounded number eight. Coming up on nine, he watched Gavin feint toward the inside with his right front wing tucked up against Connolly’s nose for a split second. Connolly corrected toward the barrier.

“Good!” Hank shouted, unable to stop this time. By that time, they were just into the shallow bowl of the inversion. As expected, the number nine car hugged the curve. Hank’s spine was stiff, his hands shaking, as Gavin pulled up alongside Connolly. By corner ten, he’d edged past. 

Then, for what seemed to be no reason, Connolly swerved, tire-checking Gavin’s rear wheel. Half of his front wing exploded, sending carbon fiber chunks skittering all over the track.

The thirty-six car’s back end was fishtailing, rotating wide, trying to recover. 

“Shift your brake balance!” Hank shouted into the mic. “Remember he’s correcting, too!” In fact, with his front wing gone, Connolly’s aerodynamics were shot. His car wouldn’t be able to hold a curve at the necessary speeds. 

But the damage was done. Gavin was braking heavily, overcompensating, losing his cool. 

Hank could practically smell the reek of burned rubber as the back tires screeched. “Let up! Let up, Gavin! You’re gonna swing wide on eleven!” 

It felt like watching everything in slow motion from there: Hank could see the slight wobble of the right rear tire. Gavin’s panic braking had worn a flat spot in the tread, thinner but still superheated from the incredible speed. 

“He’s going to lose that tire,” Tina said.

“I fucking know that!” shouted Hank. 

Sure enough, the unevenly worn rubber broke apart, shredding and funneling up from the track surface as if raised by a tornado. The car went off balance immediately, spinning from the outer edge around corner eleven and hard into the trap beyond. Gravel sprayed up, launched by the remaining tires. One stone even knocked the CCTV camera by the outer wall.

_Like kicking pebbles into black water. Should have stayed at Imeretinskaya…_

“Fuck!” Hank ripped the headset off and flung it to the ground.

In the paddock after the race, while Leopold Kamski Jr. accepted his first grand prix win atop the podium, Gavin fumed. “You saw what he did!” he shouted. “Everybody saw it! There’s no way in hell that’s a legal move.”

Hank sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. He almost felt like his skin belonged to someone else, or at least was loosely tacked over something shifting and half-melted. “And we’re going to lodge a protest about it,” he told Gavin. “Look, you nabbed some points for completing half the race. It’s not a total loss.”

“But I could have _placed_.” Gavin gnawed the inside of his cheek, his jaw muscles visibly flexing. 

Hank shook his head and turned away. “Maybe if you’d kept your shit together. But I guess that’s too much to ask.” After a moment of silence, he looked back. 

Gavin was still angry, standing with his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides, but now deep hurt was spread plainly over his face. His eyes shone with frustrated tears.

Right away, Hank felt something crumple inside him. Even so, he didn’t say a damn thing.

“Go fuck yourself, Hank,” Gavin gritted out, turning on his heel and stalking away.

The abstract, irrational _need_ for a drink was almost overwhelming as Hank watched him go. He curled his fingers in and let the bright pain of his ragged fingernails digging into the flesh of his palms clear the craving. It was successful, but only by a hair. When that didn’t work, sometimes he would press a thumb hard into his still-tender underarm skin until stars burst behind his eyelids. Pain helped to filter out the desire, to pull his attention elsewhere. 

More than once, Hank had found it funny that what brought him back from jonesing was his focus on a consequence that had nothing to do with any of his addictions. He’d been stone cold sober when he’d smashed into that barrier and gone up in flames. Having nothing to blame for something that happened was infinitely worse than being forced to take responsibility. It was no good trying to repent for circumstance.

Hank was dragged out of his thoughts by a roar going up across the paddock. A knot of spectators had formed near the area reserved for Kamski Cyberlife Racing cars and trailers. An icy dread plunging into his gut, Hank set out hobbling as fast as he could toward it.

He stopped short when the tight circle of onlookers burst on one side, spilling out two tangled figures. One of them wore a dirty white and blue coverall. The other’s jumpsuit was off his shoulders and tied around his waist, but Hank still recognized it at once.

Gavin—specifically Gavin trying to beat the living shit out of “Nines” Connolly.

Connolly, who had a handful of Gavin’s undershirt, didn’t look to be taking it seriously. He’d landed on his back but now had raised his head and was laughing. He looked about to say something just before Gavin pulled back, quick as a cobra, and smashed his fist into the side of Connolly’s mouth. When Connolly spluttered in protest, a mist of pinkish blood fountained up. 

Grinning, Gavin hit him again.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Hank bellowed, stamping hard on his bad foot in an attempt to rush over. The wave of pain was nauseating, making him stop in his tracks and bend nearly double until it passed.

Luckily, someone had grabbed Gavin’s arm and was dragging him away in spite of his thrashing. 

Connolly scooted away from his flailing shoes and rolled over to his hands and knees, spitting blood in the dirt. As Hank approached, Connolly got to his feet and looked back, shooting another gobbet of bloody phlegm from between his teeth. 

“Animal,” he said to Gavin.

That started Gavin struggling against the arms that held him. He looked over at Hank, snarling. “He said he did it on purpose! He admitted it!”

“So you deck him?” Hank asked, feeling his rage like pressure inside his skull. “There are procedures for this!”

“I didn’t admit to anything,” Connolly said, slightly mush-mouthed from the attack. “He’s gone bloody mad.”

Hank put a hand up toward Connolly, about to tear into Gavin, when a cool voice cut through the residual crowd noise. 

“Well, Anderson. Perhaps you should tell your little dog here that this is motor racing, not a cage match.”

The familiar sound slipped a cool spike of fear down Hank’s spine. He turned to see a slim man dressed in black from head to toe: shirt, jacket, tie, dust-coated black brogues. The man was pale as buttermilk, with a long ponytail gathered and knotted at the back of his head, the hair at the sides shaved close to the skin. He had a pair of round, mirrored sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose, like some kind of vampire John Lennon.

Hank had recognized Elijah Kamski’s voice before he saw him, but the presentation was so ridiculous that he had to tamp down a snort of laughter. Oh, there was so much he wanted to say, starting with a petty dig at Elijah’s look and running from there. But thanks to Gavin, he didn’t have the high ground.

Instead, he pointed a finger at Connolly. “That bullshit move should have had a penalty attached.”

“What penalty?” Elijah asked. “Nigel was already out of the race. Your driver moved too close on an ill-advised overtake and damaged my car.”

“You fucking well know that’s not what happened,” Hank growled. “You were always too stubborn and impatient to learn the rules of the sport, but I know you’re not stupid, Elijah. Or blind.”

Elijah cleared his throat and began absently polishing those silly glasses with the end of his tie. “We’ll let the FIA decide, yes?” He clapped Connolly on his broad shoulder. “I think we’re done here.”

The crowd dispersed with a scatter of mumbled opinions and whispered judgments.   
Free now, Gavin righted his clothes, still looking indignant. “Hank—”

“Don’t talk to me,” Hank shot back, and limped away.

***

The team returned to a storm-ridden Detroit—cooler but lashed with rain that turned the whole expanse between Carl’s house and the racing complex into mud. It had taken all of three days for FIA to hand down its decision. Nigel Connolly was docked three points toward the championship for the illegal move in Sochi. 

Gavin Reed was suspended for the remainder of the season.

Manfred Motors Racing was, for all intents and purposes, out of the ring for 2019.

Hank sat with a cup of coffee going cold, listening to rain pummeling the roof of Carl’s conservatory room. The potted plants set beside its glass walls shivered.

“Should we fold the operation now?”

Hank turned. Carl’s power chair had moved into the doorway on silent wheels.

“Preserve what little dignity we have left?” Carl asked. His smile was thin and tense.

“I don’t know,” Hank said.

Carl moved the chair up, softly knocking the table so the coffee cup wobbled, spilling a little onto the inlaid blue glass tiles. “I’ve relied on you for advice all these years, Hank,” he said. “It’s your advice I need now. Your _decision_. Do we pack in Manfred Racing and call it done?”

Hank let the question sit for a long time. Erratic gusts of wind blew fat raindrops in a thrumming torrent against the glass. Finally, he said, “Not yet.”

“We have one driver,” said Carl. “And he’s unstable at best.”

“I think I can get us another one,” Hank told him. “New talent. Somebody the world hasn’t seen yet.”

“Been holding out on me, then?” Carl asked. 

When Hank turned to look, he was smiling. 

_Hope. What a fucking racket._

But in that expression was also every chance that Carl had ever given him and that Hank had tried his dead-level best not to squander. _In Old Leo’s memory, at the very least._

“Only until I was sure,” he said.

“And are you sure?” asked Carl.

“Not completely,” Hank admitted. “But if we can hold out, scrape and save up and conserve our resources, I think I can put a team on the track for 2020.”

“With this new driver…”

Hank nodded. “He drives IndyCar right now. I’ve got a line in with his manager. They’re both on board.” No need to mention the protective mother factor, at least not yet. 

“And who else?”

Hank paused again, psyching himself up. Not that Carl was anywhere near as judgmental as he was. “Gavin. _If and only if_ he gets some kind of help.”

Raising a single sparse eyebrow, Carl said, “You see yourself in him.”

Hank shrugged, unsure of the expected answer.

Carl’s expression softened. “So do I,” he said. He shifted his weight in the chair with a soft noise of effort, then placed a thin hand on Hank’s shoulder. 

The rain fell on and on, without letting up, until sunset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I literally cannot thank my beta enough. Bless you for your insight, [JolliSkies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JolliSkies/pseuds/JolliSkies)! 
> 
> More definitions/glossary:
> 
> Grand Prix: a Formula One race. Plural (because French): grands prix.
> 
> gearbox: just like in a road car or any multi-gear motor vehicle, the component that allows for shifting between gears.
> 
> throttle: in a car, the mechanism by which fluid is constricted or allowed to flow. Most cars have a gas pedal with a throttle cable that cuts off fuel to the engine or let it flow, hence "hit the gas."
> 
> debridement: (not car-related) the process of removing unhealthy or dead tissue from a burn or wound to allow it to heal better.
> 
> grid: the order in which cars line up at the start of the race. Grid order is determined in qualifying (see below).
> 
> qualifying: the general term for timed laps that occur a day or two before a race. The driver with the fastest qualifying time is first on the grid (pole position), the second fastest in second, etc.
> 
> front wing: the front wings on a race car are carbon fiber extensions that aid aerodynamics and help keep air moving over the body of the car, keeping it on the track at high speeds with downforce (see previous chapter glossary)
> 
> chassis: the "main part" of a racing car (also called the monocoque), which includes where the driver sits (cockpit), bargeboards (side panels), nose, sidepods (relatively new aerodynamic innovations that assist speed by, for instance, directing exhaust flow and aiding in cooling, which reduces drag.


	3. Early October 2019

The day that Hank started his trip out west was chilly but bright as hope. He drove with the sun at his back and climbing steadily as he made his way across the Upper Peninsula. It set with a rusty red glow on the horizon as he pulled into Des Moines for the night. The following day would be a long trek across Nebraska with the Rockies ever in the distance, ending after nearly ten hours in Denver. 

It ended up being quite the haul, and he was sore to the point of immobility after unfolding himself out of the car in the evening, but the road trip was important. Not so much on the way there, but certainly on the return drive, when he hoped to use the span of half the country getting to know Connor Stern. 

Between Denver and Salt Lake City, Hank treated himself to a longer drive, winding through the national forests thick with bluish evergreens and into the tawny desert with its clusters of low, scrubby growth. It gave him time to think, too—which wasn’t necessarily something he wanted most of the time. But his approach had to be on point, not to Connor but apparently to his mother. 

And Hank was flailing.

Truth be told, he’d never had much experience with mothers. As for his own, he had a few scraps of memories from before the day she packed a suitcase and walked out on him and his father. It had been either that same day or the next that Gerald Anderson had gathered up everything she’d left behind and burned it right in the yard. Young as he was, Hank knew that bonfire had nothing to do with celebration.

His first solid memory after his mother left was of falling off the kitchen counter while climbing to reach the cabinets overhead, left desperately hungry for a day and a half while Gerald drank himself into a stupor. Hank had gotten a hard smack on the uninjured side of his head when his father had emerged to investigate, but at least he’d gotten his coveted peanut butter sandwich, as well.

For the next thirteen years, the old man had given Hank pretty much nothing but grief. At least he’d been a sullen drunk and not a violent one. Even though Gerald had owned the shop, Hank couldn’t credit him for his wealth of knowledge on engines. Bill, the taciturn head mechanic, had been the one teaching Hank to diagnose and repair engines—and to build them from scratch. Hank had learned alongside Bill’s kid, Robby, getting more fathering from someone else’s dad than he ever got from his own.

After Gerald kicked off at the ripe old age of forty-six, Hank sold the shop to Bill at an insane discount. He didn’t want a legacy or an inheritance; he just needed to _get_ _gone_.

Connor had lost a father, too—but one who had loved and wanted and _chosen_ him. And he still had another parent. Hank couldn’t blame Amanda Stern for wanting to keep her son close, and he hated being the one who had to convince her to let go.

More than that, Hank was sure his own future—his own place in the chronicles of the sport he’d devoted his life to—depended on her answer. Not that he would ever say that either to her or to Connor.

After leaving Salt Lake early, Hank guided the borrowed Aston-Martin through the emptiness of northern Nevada to the forested verge of California. A brilliant pink sunset lit the shady tunnel of roadway through the conifers of Plumas National Forest, and he emerged into cool twilight near what had been a town called Paradise. Almost the whole damn thing was blackened rubble now, with hopeful evergreen saplings poking up through what little the wildfires had left.

Troubled by the sight in a way he couldn’t truly name, Hank passed as quickly as he could, heading at last toward a Marriott hotel in Chico. The following day, he was scheduled to meet Connor and his mother at Jeff Fowler’s cabin on the outskirts of town. 

It took him at least two hours to figure out—after a long shower, a couple minutes of plucking the stray wiry hairs sprouting between his eyebrows, and a long time lying in bed—why he couldn’t make himself sleep. The room was the perfect temperature, he was full from a meal at a nearby diner and should have dropped off a long time ago. But sleep had only crept into the edges of his consciousness when he finally figured it out. The realization brought with it a startled laugh. 

For the first time in years, Hank Anderson was _nervous_.

He chided himself instead of trying to pick apart the reasons for it—at least initially. But when his brain stubbornly refused to settle, Hank indulged a little prodding around in his psyche. Maybe the same old _poor-me_ shit would bore him enough that he could grab a couple hours of shut-eye. 

It had only been a few weeks since the race in Monterey, and while it was irrational to think that Connor Stern had somehow lost his edge or his... _glow_ , a small part of Hank expected to show up at the cabin to find a different person claiming that name. He was paranoid precisely because he’d hung so much on this encounter: the future of the team, his own good name, his legacy. Winning again and reclaiming that sliver of sweet invincibility, even secondhand. They’d begun snowballing since Monterey, gaining speed and traction on wishful thinking alone. 

When he’d almost slipped under, he finally admitted owing part of the nervousness to, well, _attraction_. Plain, old-fashioned dick fuel. It was crude, but Connor was damned good-looking. It had thrown Hank for a loop when they’d met and he hoped to hell he could cram down any dumb schoolboy giddiness tomorrow. 

Anyway, what chance did a scarred, beat up, chubby old fuck have with a young guy like that? Less than zero, no matter what passing glint he’d imagined when the kid looked at him. To think otherwise was stupid. 

Back in the nineties, sure—he could have pulled a guy like Connor...because he’d _been_ a guy like Connor. Young, brash, just aware enough of being a catch to pretend it wasn’t a big deal. 

“Oh, fuck off,” Hank told himself. He rolled over to one side, knocking his healing foot against the opposite ankle and sending a twinge of pain up his leg. He was probably projecting. Connor was the opposite of brash and showy. And whether or not he knew how pretty he was, it didn’t matter. 

Hank was only there to bring him back east, train him to be a champion, and try _not_ to make him any other goddamn thing but that. Full of self-pity and angry at himself about it, Hank shut his eyes tight and pictured the Imeretinskaya shore: black on black.

***

As it turned out, Jeff Fowler’s vacation place was a _cabin_ in the same way the Vanderbilt Mansion was a _house._ Dominating the lodge was a huge timber-and-glass structure: at least two stories tall and made of huge, polished logs that crossed at the top, a pretentiously modern take on the old A-frame cottage. What wasn’t wood was either window or skylight, giving anyone driving by a full view of goings-on inside. Approaching the house, Hank saw leather couches behind the glass, a starburst chandelier, here and there a violently green potted plant. 

The room was as good as a greenhouse, no doubt ungodly expensive to bring down to a livable temperature. As Hank pulled into the circular drive, gravel crunching under the Aston’s tires, he saw the rest of the house was more modest. Or at least less exposed. It was made of the same golden wood, and both stories still boasting huge windows, but shades or blinds were drawn over many of them, hiding the rooms from prying eyes.

The effect was so jarring that for a second Hank felt sure that nobody was even there.

Then, Jeff emerged from a door set between the huge A-frame and the rest of the house, his arms raised and a big smile on his face. He was wearing what were clearly pajama pants, worn out at the knees, and a toggle-clasp sweater over his t-shirt. At least it wasn’t a smoking jacket.

Hank opened the car door and stepped out to a chorus of morning birds. His foot throbbed dully as blood flow returned, and merely stretching brought a chorus of dry popping sounds from his spine. 

“Hank, my man!” Jeff called. He jogged down the two steps from the small porch to the gravel below and crunched over to offer Hank a back-slapping hug. 

The complete turnaround in his attitude compared to Monterey was still disconcerting, despite the call when Hank was in Sochi. He figured part of it was about making an exaggerated show of trust for the benefit of Connor’s mother. It struck him just then that he’d never learned her name. 

“Come in, come in,” Jeff said. “It’s about to get hot out here. I’ve got a fresh pot of coffee on. You a fan of coffee?”

Favoring his bad leg, Hank followed him up to the house. “Who isn’t?” he asked.

Jeff laughed. “Crazy people, I guess.”

Inside the much cooler entry hall, Hank snagged a quick look at the glassed-in space. It almost seemed brighter inside than out, the sun and the cloudless sky reflected over and over in every shining surface. 

“You know,” Hank said, “this wasn’t exactly what I pictured when you said you had a cabin.”

Huffing a laugh, Jeff said, “To be fair, I actually wanted something smaller. But my wife fell in love with it. Hard to deny that woman anything. You a married man, Hank?”

“No, sir. Just never happened for me.”

The admission seemed to give Jeff pause, but he recovered quickly. He ushered Hank into an airy kitchen, where two women sat at the small dinette table, coffee mugs in hand.

Both looked up when Hank entered. One of them, who had short hair that lay in precise, sculpted curls along her scalp, stood up and smiled. Her teeth were as close to perfect as Hank had ever seen off of a movie screen. She was slim and obviously fit, only the creases at her knuckles when she held out her hand hinting at her age. 

“Hank Anderson, meet my wife, Anita,” Jeff said. “Nutritionist to the stars.”

Hank grasped Anita’s warm hand, feeling the ridges of a large ring under his thumb. 

“ _Failed_ nutritionist to one husband,” she said, giving Jeff a pointed look as she squeezed Hank’s fingers. “Very nice to meet you, Hank.”

“The point is that you keep trying,” Jeff said to her. He turned and tapped Hank’s shoulder softly with the back of his hand. “By the way, you _do_ have to try her low fat cream cheese coffee cake. I’m watching my sugar, so I only had one slice, but it’s to die for.”

At that, Anita made a disbelieving noise. “One slice _in addition_ to the slice I found missing this morning? Would that be the ‘one slice’ you’re talking about?”

Jeff put a hand to his chest, playing offended. “It’s not my fault if the boy wanted a midnight snack.”

Anita shook her head and looked over to Hank. “He really is too much.” Her fondness was clear, though, comfortable and rich as the scent of coffee.

Watching it gave Hank a feeling like a chilly wind blowing at his back. Embarrassed, he pushed it to the back of his mind along with the thoughts from last night, and struggled to close the door on the whole mess. 

Behind Anita, the other woman had stood up, and was waiting by the edge of the table. She was built a little broader—wider in the shoulders and hips than Jeff’s wife, though not by much. Her hair was long, done up in an elaborate braid that circled the crown of her head before trailing down her neck to burst into smaller plaits over her shoulder. This had to be Jeff’s sister. 

_Connor’s mom._

Her face was somber but not severe, and there was something expectant and almost challenging in the way she held herself. 

Hank avoided eye contact until Jeff spoke up. 

“This is my sister, Amanda Stern,” he said. “Amanda, this is Hank, like I was telling you.”

As Hank stepped forward for the obligatory handshake, he sent up a little prayer that Jeff wouldn’t try to play salesman. The guy was a blunt instrument, and would only knock things askew when Hank needed finesse. Selling the team—selling _himself_ —was a kind of seduction, after all, and Hank liked to think he hadn’t lost all skill in that arena.

“Pleased to meet you, Mister Anderson,” said Amanda. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

In her tone, Hank read caution. There was something else—something _brittle_ —underneath it, but he wasn’t going to speculate. Instead, he shook her hand, which gripped his firmly, uncompromising.

Jeff waved a hand toward a hallway leading away from the kitchen. “‘Manda, you want to call that lazy child of yours down here to meet our guest?”

Anita gave his shoulder a playful smack. “Oh, shut your mouth. He’s excited. Wouldn’t you be nervous?”

Shifting his weight and shoving his hands in his pockets, Hank stayed silent, waiting. It was strange to be talked about—or _around_ —like he wasn’t there. However informal, the red-carpet treatment embarrassed him now, where once he used to eat it up. When things were shiny, loud, and chaotic, he could step outside of his head and be a commodity. Unlike driving, it required no thought. He had liked press appearances and award ceremonies and parties even better than the sex that usually followed—only because what came after the few minutes of bliss was a long slide down into the dark of his own mind. 

Well, at least on the nights that the booze let his dick cooperate.

Of course, racing itself had been a consistent high. But these days he’d gotten to thinking he might have been better all along staying behind the scenes. Managing a race meant drawing out the rush from the moment the cargo planes touched down all the way to the winner’s podium. But for it to matter at all, the podium _had_ to figure in.

Amanda moved to the foot of the stairs and cupped a hand around her mouth. “Connor, honey,” she called, “come on down! You’re keeping people waiting.”

Quick, loud footsteps sounded on a staircase somewhere, then slapped on tile until Connor burst into the room, grinning at his mother. He was barefoot, in sweatpants and a t-shirt, a towel still draped around his neck. Wet curls bounced around his face and ears. His hair looked just the same as Hank’s had long ago, only darker: an unruly mop that would fluff up if not tamed by product.

Hank’s mouth went dry. Heat rose in his cheeks, and he pulled in a deep breath to cut it off, get control of his reaction. 

Connor was no less stunning than he’d been on the track, smudged with motor oil and coated in dust.

“Sorry, Mom,” he said. “Lost track of time in the gym room.” He turned toward his aunt and uncle, his dimpled face scrubbed bright. “Your setup here is awesome. Thanks for letting me use it.”

“Well,” said Anita, “you come back any time you like, okay, sweetheart?”

Connor nodded. He pushed the damp towel up to scrub the back of his head, seeming only then to catch sight of Hank. The brilliant smile faded a little, but what took its place wasn’t disappointment but that same dizzy-eyed wonder, as if Hank had climbed out of a billboard right in front of him.

It was obvious enough to make Hank look down at his feet, trying to dodge his gaze.

“Hi, Hank,” Connor said quietly.

When Amanda tutted, Hank looked up again.

“I think ‘Mister Anderson’ would be more polite, hon,” she told Connor.

Hank bit back a surge of annoyance at her. She had chosen not to call him ‘Hank,’ and now it seemed like she was trying to distance Connor with some ridiculous formality. He told himself he didn’t need to be so damn possessive when Connor joining the team wasn’t even a sure thing.

“Come on, ‘Manda,” Jeff said. “We’re all adults here. We can talk on a first-name basis.”

“How about we get coffee for whoever needs it and head to the solarium,” Anita said, clearly trying to cut the tension. 

_The solarium_. Hank fought the urge to shake his head. Even though he’d spent most of his life around them—and had even been one himself for a while—he wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to rich people. 

A few aimless minutes later, they were all settled in the bright room, its air conditioning fighting a losing battle with the persistent sun. Jeff had shed his sweater at last. 

At least the coffee was good and strong. Hank held the thick ceramic mug under his nose and breathed deep. While he typically took his undoctored, it looked like Connor had loaded his with cream and sugar. At least he drank coffee.

True to Jeff’s endorsement, the cake _was_ excellent. Hank polished it off in a few quick bites, because it seemed like no one wanted to start talking until he finished. He was suddenly glad he’d never had to meet a romantic partner’s parents.

A brief clatter filled the silent room as he set the plate and fork down on the side table next to him. Time for diplomacy; Hank cleared his throat and cracked his knuckles. 

“Thank you for inviting me out here, Jeff,” he began. “I know we had a rough introduction, but I’ll take the blame for that. I’d had a little surgery on my foot and, to be honest, I was a grumpy bastard that day.” 

Amanda’s eyes widened slightly.

“Pardon my language,” Hank said, looking straight at her, calling her out for her discomfort.

Jeff laughed a little too loudly. “I was hardly a pollyanna myself. The car had me... _darn_ angry.”

Chancing a look at Connor, Hank saw that he held the mug halfway between his mouth and his knee, apparently forgotten. He wasn’t interested in the words; he was parsing the dynamic as they spoke. 

_Smart_ , Hank thought.

“In any case, I wasn’t so distracted that I missed what I came there to see,” he went on. “Markus Manfred—he’s the team owner’s son—has a good eye for talent after growing up in the racing world. So when he asks me to make a special trip, I tend to listen.” It was giving Markus a lot more credit as a scout than he’d earned, but Hank figured the strategy supported a couple of things, one being the idea that Manfred Motors was constantly out prowling for talent. It also made it seem like they listened to those who weren’t in the business—and to young people. 

He was determined to build a case as precise and striking as Connor’s technique.

Looking over at Jeff, he said, “I didn’t even need a full race to know that I was looking at something special in the number forty-eight car. There were some really daring moves—stuff you don’t often see during an entire Formula One race these days. Plus, I think Connor’s got an eye for strategy and a real sense for the track. I need you to believe me when I say having _one_ of those things is rare.”

Pointing all this at Jeff was an ego-stroking move, as if Connor were tearing up the track because of him, and not in spite of his crappy cars. Hank hesitated to point it directly at Connor quite yet, because having the kid flustered and blushing wouldn’t serve his purpose. Also, to be honest, he didn’t need the distraction.

He turned to face Amanda. 

To her credit, she didn’t look down or away, only met his eyes with a prim, reserved expression. 

“I talked to Connor in the paddock,” Hank said. “Told him exactly why Markus had brought me there and what I was looking for. I didn’t make him any offers or promises. Even so, he told me outright that his family—you all here—and their wishes were more important than any personal advancement.”

Another glance at Connor showed him looking down into his lap, the nearly full cup of coffee resting on one knee.

“And I admire that,” Hank continued. “Very, very much.”

Connor raised his head. If he was surprised to see Hank looking at him, he didn’t show it. At least physically. But Hank could tell the cogs were turning furiously in his head.

He cleared his throat again and shifted on the couch cushion, sitting forward. “I’ve been lucky enough in my career to have two great men supporting me. I’m not a blood relation to either, but both are as good as family to me. Now, I’m not presuming to take the place of anyone here, and I’m not claiming I’m a great man—not by a long shot. But I _do_ think I’m in a position to help Connor reach his full potential in this sport, and I’m asking for your permission to try.”

“By doing what?” Amanda asked.

“Giving him a provisional spot on the Manfred Motors Racing Team,” Hank said. “That means he’d be training with me and the rest of the team from now until the end of the year, at which point we’d decide whether to make that provisional offer permanent.” 

He only paused for the second it took to turn and fix Connor with a look. “However much you train here, you’d be training twice as much. Whatever time you spend on the track now, it would double. It means late nights, early mornings, a lot of frustration. You’ll be working harder at this than anything you’ve worked for in your life so far.”

If Hank wasn’t mistaken, Connor nodded—just a faint dip of his chin, exquisitely restrained.

“But you also have an opportunity to move to the highest levels of a sport respected all over the world,” Hank said. “There are no guarantees in Formula One, because there are no guarantees in anything. But very few people even get far enough to have the chance. The offer is on the table now, Connor. So you need to ask yourself: is this something you think you can do? And if so, is it something you want?”

The room fell silent, hanging on Connor’s next words.

Hank hoped he wouldn’t ask to think about it. Time was running out.

Amanda put a hand on her son’s shoulder, and he turned his head, his still-damp curls swaying.

“Do you want this, Con?” she asked. 

He took a breath, let it out. “Yeah, Mom. I really do.”

“Well,” Amanda said, “like your Aunt Anita said, you’re an adult. You can make your own choices. And if this is what you choose...I’m behind you.”

Connor’s shaky, relieved laugh signaled the break in tension throughout the room. 

Jeff clapped his hands a couple times and squeezed his wife’s shoulder gently. She smiled and patted his hand. 

Hank kept himself still and straight-backed even though it felt like a dam-break in his head. He watched Connor shakily set his mug down and turn to hug Amanda. 

“When do you need to go?” she asked him.

He broke away and looked over at Hank.

“We should leave today,” Hank said.

Amanda looked stunned. “Really?”

Jeff had gotten to his feet. “Well, the man didn’t drive all the way from Detroit to go back empty-handed.”

“Can’t he have a week?” Amanda asked. “He needs to pack, wrap some stuff up here.”

“I’ve got to go, Mom,” Connor told her. “I’ll be okay.”

Hank stood, his knees wobbly with relief. “There’ll be time for him to come back and visit. Probably around the holidays.”

“Okay, honey,” Amanda said, clearly fighting tears. “I guess you’d better go pack up, then, huh?”

“Yeah,” Connor said, grinning. It was an easily read expression—pure exhilarated joy. He popped up from the leather couch and started to jog toward the door before turning around again and going up to Hank, one hand extended.

It was hard to tell whether his flush was from excitement or the same wide-eyed, almost worshipful awe. Hank took his hand, the palm warm and damp.

“Thank you so much,” Connor said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “Thank you. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. I promise I won’t let you down, Hank.”

_You can’t possibly make that promise_ , Hank thought, but he bit back the words and smiled as Connor shook his hand over and over. 

The bare wood construction of the house carried the sound of every knocking drawer and every thumping footstep as Connor packed up for the trip back East. Jeff loaded the dishwasher while Hank and Anita had another cup of coffee, standing mostly silent. She’d offered him another slice of the cake, but he’d turned it down—not without a little regret.

Zoning out, sipping the coffee and watching birds chase each other through the fruit trees at the edge of the property, Hank nearly jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and found himself face-to-face with Connor’s mother. He clenched his teeth, psyching himself up for the inevitable scolding. 

“I know my son isn’t a child, Mister Anderson,” Amanda said. “He can make his own decisions.”

“Good,” Hank said cautiously.

She smiled for what was probably the first time since they’d met, but the accompanying laugh was brittle, rueful. “It’s strange—I know it sounds almost insane—but I almost feel like I _know_ you. Through Connor. He’s...well, racing is practically all he’s talked about since David and I adopted him. And you, your history. I almost came to believe you didn’t actually exist. That you were just a symbol for him.”

Feeling like his muscles were twitching below his skin, Hank shifted in discomfort. “Of what, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe some hurt he suffered before he joined our family. I mean, we took him to therapists, but they always saw him alone. I felt it was important to respect my child’s privacy, that he would tell David and me when he was ready. Either he’s still not ready, or it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Hank scratched his beard, shaking his head slightly. “So you’re wondering why I’m still here. Why Connor didn’t just put me down like a crutch when he got better. Is that it?”

A complicated set of emotions ran across Amanda’s face, one after the other, too quickly for Hank to pin any of them down. She was clearly shocked to be called out, but there was much more to it than that. “I guess it is, in a way,” she said at last. 

The patience Hank had built up to confront this woman had worn very thin. He had Connor in the bag. That was what mattered. “Look, Missus Stern, I’m not a hero, some kind of myth. Connor’s going to find that out soon enough. I’m just a regular guy with regular-guy problems like everyone else.”

Her expression was tight, pained, but she still said, “I know. In many ways, I still see Connor as a child, and that’s my burden to bear.”

Hank made a noise of assent, unsure of what more to say. He pulled back his sleeve and glanced at his watch. 

“Will he be safe?” Amanda asked.

“The sport is safer than it’s ever been,” he said, trying not to sigh. “Some people would argue it’s _too safe_. That there’s no excitement anymore. Would I prefer that to watching drivers die? Of course.”

“It’s just that” —she paused for a moment, worrying at her prominent knuckles with the other hand— “a man of your particular appearance doesn’t inspire confidence.”

Hank huffed a disbelieving laugh, then drained the rest of his coffee, now gone lukewarm.

However blunt her observation may have been, it wasn't wrong.

He pointed to the scars on the hand holding the empty mug. “When all this happened, that was a different time. With different rules.” He paused to swallow back the harsh words that wanted to rise up. She cared—that was all. Leopold Kamski had cared about _him_ , taken the burden of his injuries on his own conscience. It was simply easier to push away Amanda Stern’s concern than to imagine feeling responsible for someone’s hurt all over again. 

He cast a quick look over his shoulder toward Jeff. “Formula One safety standards are the strictest in the racing world.” 

It seemed to soften the harsh, worried lines of her face, even though Hank knew better than to offer a promise to her as Connor had to him. Amanda likely knew it wasn’t something that could be given

“All right,” she said quietly.

With a nod, Hank turned and walked away. He set his mug down next to the sink where Jeff was drying his hands. Though the kitchen was cool, he went back outside, hating California with every fiber of his being and determined not to go back inside until Connor was ready to go.

***

Hank had been sweating profusely, pissed and miserable, by the time Connor came bounding down the lodge’s front steps with a backpack on his shoulder and a duffel bag in one hand. The sheer energy in his hundred-watt grin went a long way toward eroding Hank’s anger, but he was still keen to be on the road and back to cooler climates.

Struggling to his feet, Hank dusted off his pant legs on instinct. “Saddle up, kid,” he said, using the key fob to open the Aston’s trunk. “You can put your bags in there.”

His eyes wide, Connor scanned the car’s sleek curves. “This is an amazing car. Is it yours?”

“Nah, it’s Carl’s,” Hank told him. Then he clarified, “Carl Manfred, the team owner.”

“I know,” said Connor. His tone wasn’t smarmy or know-it-all, but rather casually impressed, as if he’d expected nothing less from the team—or from Hank himself. 

It was entertaining to watch him slip into the passenger seat and scan the interior with an expression of thrilled wonder. The smell of heated leather boiled up around them. Hank allowed himself a smile and cranked the A/C. 

Like a ten-year-old on his way to camp, Connor lowered his window and waved toward his family as the car pulled away. 

A glance in the rear view mirror showed Jeff and Anita waving back wildly. Amanda, meanwhile, only clutched a curled fist close to her heart. Hank looked back at the road, a sour twist to his mouth.

After putting the window back up, Connor said, “Sorry about my mom. She gets really worried.”

Hank sniffed. “Your uncle warned me.” He paused to tuck his hair behind his ears—first one side then the other. “I gotta ask, though: if she’s so worried about you racing, why did she let you start driving in the first place?”

With a bright laugh, Connor said, “Probably because I wouldn’t stop bugging her about it. Her _or_ my dad. Pretty much as soon as I got placed with them, I was talking about racing—cars and drivers and teams.”

“Always F1?” asked Hank, shooting a glance to his right.

Connor looked somewhat uncomfortable. “Yeah, pretty much. It was the first kind I ever saw. On TV, I mean. I never went to a live race until after Mom and Dad adopted me.”

“Courtesy of your uncle, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Connor said. “It was my dad who suggested I could hang out with Uncle Jeff and watch what he did. Back then he was just hot-rodding. Speed tests in the desert and stuff. You know, messing around.”

“Maybe your mom thought you’d get it out of your system?”

Connor shrugged. “Could be. I don’t remember her being worried about this stuff until I moved up from karting.”

_That was good_ , Hank thought. A lot of European drivers also got their start as kids on go-kart tracks. In some countries, the kiddie races got so competitive that parents would end up duking it out over bad calls, just like crazy Little League dads in the States. Having traveled all over the world for decades, Hank knew better than most that people everywhere were more or less the same. 

“How about your brother?” he asked Connor. “Did she worry about him?”

“Yeah. But I guess it was regular mom worry.” Connor shrugged again and smiled. “Not much danger of wiping out in Science Olympiad or chess club.”

That actually got a laugh out of Hank, sharp and sudden. “Chris, he’s a big fuckin’ nerd, huh?”

“Oh,” Connor said quietly. “You remembered his name.”

When Hank looked over in the silence that followed, Connor was staring at him with intense, almost goofy appreciation. It was the kind of expression young kids would get after he’d signed their autograph books or their tiny helmets. It had seemed silly and misplaced then, and it made him profoundly uncomfortable now. His foot twitched on the gas pedal. 

“Well,” he said, “guess I didn’t drink all my brain cells away after all.” It came out sounding harsher than he’d intended.

“No, well, it’s just that—” Connor started. Then he fell silent, tucking his hands between his knees.

Part of Hank wanted to pry more out; part of him wanted desperately to let it lie. He didn’t care for another late night in a hotel room wondering why, exactly, he’d remembered the name of the kid’s brother when he forgot most other people’s names ten minutes after they met. After swallowing hard around a lump in his throat, he said, “I think you’ll get along with Markus. Carl’s son. Smart kid, a little younger than you. Is, uh, your brother younger or older?”

Connor’s spine relaxed by degrees as Hank’s eyes flickered back and forth between him and the road. “He’s actually a little younger. But he got adopted first, when he was five.”

“How old were you?”

“Seven. A lot of parents, I guess they’re okay fostering older kids, but they don’t really want to adopt them. I got lucky.”

“Seven is ‘older?’” Hank asked, somewhat incredulous.

“People want babies,” Connor said, shrugging. “It’s easier. You can start them out doing what you want.”

Hank laughed again, but this time it was harsh, with an edge. “Lemme tell you, kid,” he said, “even if you have a baby from the time it’s born, you’ve got _no_ guarantee it’s gonna do what you want. Markus barely cares how he gets from point A to point B, much less being in a race car.”

Even though his words were rife with bitterness, they seemed to reassure Connor instead of beating him back. “Yeah, that’s true.” He offered a half smile. “My parents knew I was already crazy about racing, and they took me, anyway.”

Surprising himself, Hank grinned. “Once you get the bug, it never leaves.”

Connor nodded, mirroring his smile.

On the way down to Chico, Hank had taken State Route 70, a byway studded with tiny towns. Going back with Connor, he’d opted for Route 32, which forked in the middle of Lassen Volcanic National Park, branching off eastward as Route 36. He was starving by the time they found a place to stop for lunch in the lakeside burg of Chester. 

As they sat in the overpriced café, though, he could only pick at his lasagna while Connor demolished a burger and fries. 

Hank waved off the server’s offer of a to-go box. He also had to firmly insist Connor put his wallet away when the check came. “We’re on Manfred’s dime now,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about food or finding a place to stay for the next few months, okay? We’ve got it all set up for you.” That wasn’t precisely true, but Hank at least had Carl’s blessing to pass around a company credit card.

“You’ll get a stipend while you train,” he told Connor. “Just try not to blow it all on booze.”

He’d meant it as a joke—at least in part—but Connor’s dark brows drew in, making him look more grave than Hank had ever seen him.

“I don’t drink,” he said. “And even if I did, it wouldn’t be professional.”

_Square as can be_ , Hank thought, scribbling his signature on the payment slip. “Tell that to every other driver, will you?”

Connor’s expression shifted in a split second from concerned to horrified. “I’m—oh, _dammit_. Hank, I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

Shaking his head with a chuckle, Hank raised one hand to stop him talking. “Kid, you gotta stop worrying about offending me. You are who you are. It’s useless trying to be anyone else, okay?”

He nodded, trying to process the reassurance.

Pushing down a stab of irritation, Hank clapped him on the shoulder. “Listen, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. But I haven’t touched a drop of liquor in fifteen years, so if you’re looking for somebody to _not_ have a drink with, I’m your guy.”

That set Connor off beaming again, and left Hank wondering whether he’d opened a can of worms with the offer. He had too much shit on his plate to be the kid’s confidant; anyway, he’d been hoping that Connor wouldn’t need managing—or babysitting—the way Gavin did. But it was starting to look like the audacity he showed on the track didn’t translate to any other part of his life. The fact that his unnerving hero-worship might make it worse wasn’t something Hank could afford to think about right now. 

Not when all his chips were on the table.

Connor sat mostly silent as the sun slid behind their shoulders, bound for the western horizon. He twitched when his phone pinged, then fished it out of the center console. After a brief glance, he sighed and locked it again, plunking it back into the cup holder.

The gesture was so... _adolescent_. But it clued Hank in right away as to who the text was from. Hard to pull out of the teenage mentality when mom was still checking up on you at the age of twenty-eight.

“Not in the mood, huh?” he asked Connor.

Looking down into his lap, Connor said, “She couldn’t even wait one whole day.”

Hank kept his eyes on the road ahead. “You _are_ more likely to die on an American highway than on an F1 track.” He paused, trying to keep a straight face. “Statistically.”

Connor was staring at him, tight-lipped, a hand halfway covering his mouth. When he met Hank’s eyes, he burst into laughter.

Hank couldn’t help it; he joined in, his cheeks aching by the time the two of them managed to get control again. “Ah, fuck,” he breathed, pushing his hair out of his face.

“That’d be some irony,” Connor said. “But it’s probably easy to lose track of how fast you’re going in this car. It’s so quiet and smooth.”

“Yeah,” Hank said. “If you think you can keep a handle on your lead foot, I’ll let you drive it tomorrow.”

The _ping_ of the phone sounded again in the sudden silence. 

Connor groaned.

“Really, it’s good to have a mom who cares,” Hank said. “Better than one who doesn’t, anyway.”

Connor sat for a few moments without speaking. Then he asked, “Do you remember yours?”

The question shocked Hank; how would this kid know…? Then he remembered: goddamn Nathalie and her goddamn book. She’d laid out almost his whole life from birth until the Nürburgring crash. Some of it probably didn’t make any sense; he’d been recovering still and hopped up on the pain meds he’d end up chasing for another four years afterward. 

_Until Carl had swooped in and gotten him clean for the second time._

Hank blinked, shaking his head. “Not really. Bits and pieces. I found a picture of her after my dad died—I couldn’t believe he’d actually kept one.”

With wide eyes, Connor asked, “What was it like?”

It took a moment to process, then to remember. Hank hadn’t told Nathalie about the picture because he’d thrown it away. “I had this sort-of image of her in my head,” he said at last. “The woman in the picture—she wasn’t who I remembered at all.”

“Sometimes that’s good,” Connor said. His shoulders went stiff after he said it. 

Hank guessed he hadn’t meant to, that it had just slipped out. “You remember your parents? I mean, the people who had you before your mom and dad?”

“I had another foster family before, you know, Amanda and David,” said Connor. “But yeah, I remember my birth parents. More my birth dad, really.” The smile he offered to Hank was far from straightforward, fraught with unrecognizable emotion. “He was the one who used to watch racing. That’s how I learned about Formula One.”

There wasn’t much to say to that. As far as Hank knew, people who got their kids put in foster care were fuckheads. While he knew some of his fans had to be fuckheads on account of probability, he didn’t want to know specifics. His own pops had been a fuckhead, and Hank had always been glad he’d never knocked anybody up. Chances were real good he would have made a fuckhead dad, too.

He’d hoped to make it to the Utah border, but they had left Chico with half the day gone. In full dark, desperate for a shower and some sleep, he finally pulled the Aston into the parking lot of a cheap chain motel in the town of Elko, Nevada. 

Inside the bleach-smelling lobby, he flicked his platinum-line credit card toward the clerk, who stared at it for a few seconds, trying to decide if she should recognize his name before running the card for two queen rooms.

The hall carpet by their rooms looked like the aftermath of New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Hank told Connor, “Should get going early tomorrow. I want to be back in Detroit by Sunday.”

They agreed to meet in the lobby area, snag a cellophane-wrapped pastry or two, and get on the road around seven. 

Hank wasn’t sure why, but before sliding the plastic key card into the slot on the door, he said, “You should probably answer your mom, too. Just to keep her happy.” Right away, he regretted it, figuring he should let the kid make his own decisions.

Still, Connor nodded. “I know,” he said. “She doesn’t really know what it’s like to be alone.”

“You get used to it,” Hank said.

“I know,” Connor said again, somewhat cryptically. “Good night, Hank. Sleep well.”

“Yeah. You too, kid.”

After a rinse off, Hank flicked through the satellite channels on the hotel TV, up and down. Lots of reruns: crime shows, sitcoms. Movies nobody had cared about in years. 

None of it held his attention. He was still wondering if Connor actually knew what it meant to be totally alone. What he’d probably meant was _lonely_ —that could happen anytime, even surrounded by friends, family, people who cared. 

It wasn’t often that Hank thought back to the ten and a half months he’d lived on the street, just as the world began to struggle forward into the twenty-first century. Everyone had expected something new, but everything new had passed Hank by. 

Later, in rehab again, he committed to memory exactly how long it had been and then made a vow to push the whole period out of his mind. Still, aside from the cold, sleeping rough hadn’t even been as bad as what came later during his first year in Detroit. The _true_ rock bottom. 

Sometimes he thought about whether he’d mention that time to a faceless future biographer. There wasn’t much chance of another book, not even if Manfred Motors got its comeback. He didn’t expect that someone like Nathalie—or anyone at all—would ever love him that way again. 

Of course, Hank had failed to realize that it was love that she’d given him until long after she’d gone.

He clicked the TV off and stared at the ceiling in the half-dark for a while, listening for any sound from the adjacent room. Apart from the occasional passing car, the night was quiet. At some time—impossible to pinpoint—he drifted off to sleep.

***

What was offered at the motel’s free breakfast buffet hardly earned the label “coffee.” Hank grimaced and dumped his cup of brownish water into the drip tray below the air pot, then told Connor they were going to find some real food. They ended up at a chain restaurant in front of a mountain of pancakes and hash browns, Hank gratefully draining cup after cup. 

He did admit, though, that it wasn’t as good as what they’d had back at Jeff’s cabin.

“Aunt Anita likes the best of everything,” Connor said, tapping his fork on the side of the ceramic plate. The tines dripped with golden syrup.

“Kind of like Carl,” Hank said, chuckling. “Wait till you see his place. You’ll have your pick of some really nice rooms.”

“Everyone stays at his house?” asked Connor.

“Pretty much. At least during the season.” Hank paused to take another swig of the coffee. “Well, a lot of the engineers live in houses on company land—both the team engineers and the, uh, Anderson Engine techs. But my second, Tina, stays at Carl’s.”

Connor leaned forward, grinning. “I want to meet Tina,” he said. “I read a little about her on the team website but I don’t really know anything else.”

Hank raised his eyebrows and nodded. “She’s a trip. Damn good strategist. She won’t bullshit you, but she doesn’t put up with bullshit, either.”

“What about Gavin Reed?” asked Connor. He must have seen the smile slip off Hank’s face, because he suddenly looked unsure.

“Gavin is Gavin,” Hank said, looking down at his plate. He poked at the rubbery scrambled eggs with his fork, his appetite suddenly gone.

“Oh,” Connor said, “I don’t know much about him, either, really. Just that he’s a good driver. He did Indy for a couple years, way before me, so I never got to meet him.”

Unable to hide the bitterness in his voice, Hank said, “Well, you’ll meet him when we get to the complex. I’ll let you decide what you think.” 

How Gavin would take having Connor around was something that had been weighing on Hank’s mind, as well. That was largely because he and Carl had decided not to tell him that another driver was on the way. Gavin would react however he reacted—no avoiding it—but a part of Hank hoped that a little competition would prod him to get his head back in the game. If it did, great, but there was an equal chance that it would blow up spectacularly because, as he’d said, Gavin was Gavin.

After Hank paid for breakfast, he and Connor walked out into a rare overcast day in the Nevada desert. It felt oddly disconnected, seeing low-hanging gray clouds absent the faint, metallic scent of impending rain in the air. 

“You ever seen snow?” he asked Connor, who chuckled behind his hand. 

Hank stopped walking in the middle of the parking lot. “What?”

Shaking his head, Connor said, “Nothing. Just...you haven’t been in Northern California much, have you?”

“I guess not,” Hank admitted.

Connor’s smile was kind, not teasing. “We get snow. It’s not like L.A. There’s a big ski culture; I’m pretty sure Aunt Anita skis. Not so much with Uncle Jeff.”

Hank had to laugh at that one. “He probably looks just about as graceful on skis as I would.”

“You’ve never tried?”

“ _Fuck_ , no. My center of gravity is somewhere near my chin. I’m way better sitting down. You?”

Connor shrugged. “Tried snowboarding once or twice. I didn’t like the culture. It seemed like everyone was always trying to be a badass.”

At that, Hank cracked up, coming to a halt at the Aston’s bumper. “So you picked _auto racing_ instead?”

Connor ducked his head, scratching self-consciously at the back of his neck, but he was smiling. “You don’t have to put on a show,” he said. “I mean with the way you dress or the way you act. Only the car matters.”

Once again, Hank was struck by the _purity_ of Connor’s devotion to the sport. For as obsessed with racing as he himself was, fully half of the appeal was being _seen_. At least it had been for him. Maybe it could be written off as a difference in generation. Back when Hank started, the only brain in the car had been the driver’s, for better or worse. These days, strategists and techs yammered in every driver’s earpiece like the fucking voice of God. Sure, it was the driver who turned those commands into actions, but sometimes Hank got paranoid that translating took away precious seconds from the action. Could be that Connor saw a race as more of a team effort than an opportunity to showboat. 

That wasn’t to say that Hank didn’t understand humility—no junkie made it through recovery without it. But a stubborn part of him had stopped it from bleeding into racing, and that made Connor’s words sound disjointed in his head.

By noon, the clouds had burned away, the quality of light growing rich and golden the way only autumn sunshine could be. Hank steered with his knee while he gathered his hair up and tied it back, one eye on the long and empty road before them. With a brief look over to Connor, he punched the button on the console that folded back the car’s roof. 

Warm winds tore over the windshield, lifting Hank’s collar and swirling around to send Connor’s hair tumbling wildly over his face.

He laughed and spluttered, brushing at the curls blowing into his eyes. 

With air whipping over their heads and through the rear seats, the ride was loud, drowning out the quiet classic rock floating up through the speakers. Everything smelled of hard-baked dirt and the spice of desert plants, the trail of exhaust far behind.

Glancing over at Connor again, Hank raised his eyebrows and nodded toward the deserted stretch of roadway.

Connor grinned.

With a spike of anticipation, Hank floored it and watched the LED speed display climb with stopwatch speed until it passed the hundred mile per hour mark. Forgetting himself, he laughed right out loud, prompting a whoop of joy from Connor, who no longer tried to tame the curls that twisted like flame around his head. He only leaned forward into the growing speed, one hand on the dash as if he were searching for a steering wheel there.

“Close your eyes!” Hank shouted. 

It was a strange request, but Connor did it right away, his lips slightly parted.

“Give me the gears!” He told Connor, then used the wheel-mounted switch to put the car into sport mode, engaging the full power of its twin turbo V-12 engine. It shifted lower right away, the motor growling.

“Five!” Connor shouted. 

Hank toed the throttle.

“Six!”

They were cruising at one hundred twenty miles per hour, the wind deafening. Hank flipped into SportPlus. The engine screamed.

“Oh, my God!” Connor yelled, grinning wildly but keeping his eyes shut tight. Then: “Seven!”

_One-forty. One-fifty._

As a road model, the Aston would have nowhere near the downforce of a racing car. Hank could feel the telltale “lightness” below the car’s long nose, but he decided to push it, anyway. 

_One-sixty._

“Eight!” Connor yelled, barely audible over the shriek of the car in its full power. 

The rubber band slipped free of Hank’s hair and snapped up to hit his cheek before zipping out of the car altogether. As he took one hand from the wheel to brush the sudden cloud of gray from his eyes, he caught sight of a squat, black blur at the edge of the highway. Whatever it was looked out of place; Hank flipped the car out of sport mode, the engine’s RPMs changing so abruptly that Connor opened his eyes.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Not sure.” 

It wasn’t unclear for long, as spinning blue and red lights crested the horizon, accompanied by a wailing siren. 

Hank gripped the wheel until his knuckles turned white. The scar on his right hand was stretched tight and bloodless. “Ah, fuck,” he muttered.

“Oh, no,” Connor said, looking behind them as the Aston slowed and the police car gained ground. “How fast were we going?”

Wincing, Hank said, “I think maybe one-eighty.”

Connor’s shoulders slumped. “Ah, _fuck_.”

Hank really, _really_ needed composure at that point, but the way the kid had echoed his words sounded so deflated it was comical. He snorted a laugh, trying and failing to hide it under road noise. 

For a second or two, Connor sat open-mouthed, looking at Hank like the last screw had finally come loose. 

Hank mashed his hand against his lips, fighting the smile. “Sonofabitch,” he muttered into his fingers. It was no use at all. The laugh burst out of him, a popped bubble, shattering the momentary tension in the car. He slapped the wheel with the palm of his hand.

Connor’s high, bright laugh joined in a moment later—first muffled then completely heedless and rising into the open air above the car. 

Hank was so seized by the absurdity he forgot about the cop.

A loudspeaker crackled behind them. “Pull over. _Now._ ” The officer’s amplified voice bounced echoes from the rocky desert hills.

Oh, God—he sounded _exquisitely_ pissed off, but all it did was send Hank into another laughing fit, which in turn set Connor off again. 

Hank braked and pulled the Aston over to the sloping shoulder of the road, gravel crunching under heated tires. He and Connor were desperately trying to purge the last giggles while the squad car pulled up behind, its carnival lights swirling over the windshield and the dash.

“Shit, _shit_ ,” Hank muttered. Every time he looked at Connor, he got the urge to laugh again. In the rear view mirror, he watched a sunglass-wearing figure inside the car put on a gray campaign hat and open the door. Printed over the spotless paint job were the words _Highway Patrol_.

With a sigh, Hank grabbed his wallet from the center console. God, he wished he had his old FIA racing license, not that some podunk state trooper would recognize it for what it was. He heard the patrolman slam his cruiser door and gave Connor one last look as the sound of boots stomping on gravel grew louder.

A pale hand slapped down at the top of the Aston’s windshield. “Turn off the car, sir.”

Hank raised the hand nearest the door and went slowly for the ignition button with the other. At the powerful engine fluttered to a stop, the sudden quiet of the desert felt like layers of gauze wrapping his head. The afternoon heat only made it worse.

“Do you have _any_ idea how fast you were going?”

“About one-eighty,” Hank said, resisting the urge to squint and look into the trooper’s face.

“Smart mouth, huh?” The cop held his beefy hand out for Hank’s license.

“No, sir,” Hank said, placing the card on the trooper’s palm, “it’s just that you asked me a question and I knew the answer.”

The trooper huffed. “I’ll bet you did.” He pulled off his sunglasses, the bridge of his nose already starting to sweat. “Can I ask you, Mister Henry Anderson from Michigan, what in the _hell_ you were doing driving one hundred and eighty miles an hour through my state?”

Hank looked up briefly to check out the name badge on his uniform. It read _Peterman_. Trying not to go off into a laughing fit again, Hank squeezed the steering wheel until the leather groaned. 

“Well, um, Officer Peterman,” he said, “I’m escorting this young man here to his new job.”

Peterman squinted at Connor and his rooster’s comb of disarrayed curls. “Is that right?” he asked.

Connor nodded. “Yes, sir. In Detroit.”

“And are you in this car on your way to Detroit by your own consent?” 

Hank let out a brittle laugh. “Jesus, I’m not _trafficking_ him—”

Peterman cut in. “Gonna need you to keep quiet, Mister Anderson. Let your passenger here talk.” He asked Connor, “Nobody’s forcing you to be here?”

Staring wide-eyed despite the sun overhead, Connor said, “No! No, sir. This...it’s my dream job. Chance of a lifetime.”

He sounded so crushingly _young_ that Hank wondered for a split second if it wasn’t the best idea to turn around and drop him back on Jeff Fowler’s doorstep.

“Yeah?” Peterman asked, clearly pretending to be curious. “What’s that, then?”

Connor’s chin dipped slightly. “Formula One driver, sir.”

Confusion crossed the trooper’s face. “That like long-haul or something?”

Hank snorted.

“Excuse me?” Peterman asked in a prissy, offended tone.

“Racing, sir,” Connor said, trying to cover. “Car racing.”

Another disbelieving sound. “ _He’s_ out here going one-eighty, but _you’re_ the race car driver?”

“He’s a driver, too, sir. Two-time world champion.”

Hank turned his head. He didn’t want Connor to dig them in deeper by trying to sell his racing record to some big-talking prick from Shitsville, Nowhere. “Ex,” he said. “Been retired a long time now.”

“Well,” Peterman said, “looks like someone was trying to relive the glory days. Trouble is, Mister Anderson, Interstate Eighty is not a race track. The _posted_ speed limit is seventy, which you were exceeding by—” He trailed off, his lips pursed in concentration.

Watching him struggle with the math was pathetic. “That’d be a hundred and ten,” Hank said.

“Well, I was gonna say ‘double,’” Peterman said, leaning in to get right in Hank’s face, “but as long as you’ve got all the answers for me, why don’t you get out of the car and tell me what I’m gonna do next.”

Not like he didn’t know it was coming, but Hank clenched his teeth and raised both hands as Peterman opened the driver’s side door. As he inched toward the edge of his seat, he turned toward Connor and said in a flat, soothing voice: “Take my phone. Passcode is the year I won the second championship.”

That, at least, he was sure Connor would know. The kid looked uncertain, but not cowed. He snatched the phone out of the console and held it pressed against his chest.

“Call Carl Manfred,” Hank continued. “He can arrange bail for me and get you some cash for a place to stay tonight. Okay?”

Connor nodded. 

“Put your hands on the hood,” Peterman said.

Hank moved around the door and placed his palms against the hood...for about two seconds before pulling them away with a hiss. “That’s really fucking hot. Can I use the door?”

Peterman’s fury was almost a physical presence at his back. “Fine,” the trooper said. “Just don’t move.” 

He started smacking Hank’s sides and around his waist with meaty hands—an extra-aggressive pat-down. “You got anything in your pants that’s gonna stab me or poke me?” he asked. 

Hank had to stifle a laugh. 

Connor looked at him and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

Too bad the seeds were already sown. “You’re not my type,” Hank deadpanned.

Peterman raised a hand to cuff Hank _hard_ on the back of the head. “Keep digging the hole deeper, smartass.”

Hank’s grip on the door faltered and he stumbled a little.

“Hey!” Connor shouted at Peterman. 

When he righted himself again, Hank saw that Connor had unlocked his phone and was holding it pointed toward Hank and Peterman. 

_Damned if the boy wasn’t getting it all on video._

Hank had to smile. 

“Pipe down, son,” Peterman said, standing and tugging up his heavy gun belt after patting Hank down. “I ain’t gonna hurt your friend. Not unless he makes me.”

“I’ve got people I pay to do that,” Hank quipped back.

Right away, there was a sharp blow to the back of his knee, driving it forward to smack into the Aston’s door. He had to cling to the car to avoid going down. Peterman was trying to pry his hands away, too. With a grunt, Hank went to one knee, his cheek sliding along the hot metal and swiping away its coating of powdery dust. 

“Get your hands behind your back now, motherfucker!’ Peterman yelled, even though he had already wrestled Hank’s arms behind him. 

“Hank!” Connor called. The car rocked on its wheels as Connor started to move. 

Suddenly afraid, Hank took a dust-filled breath then shouted, “Don’t move, Connor! Just keep filming! Send it to Carl!”

Peterman hauled Hank mostly upright again. The metal of the cuffs—which barely fit around his wrists in the first place—bit sharply into his skin. He felt the fragile scar tissue split and warm blood begin to trickle down into his palm. He stumbled along with Peterman’s quick gait, leaving droplets of bright blood in the dust and gravel.

Still holding the phone, Connor shouted after him. “Don’t say anything, Hank! I’ll come get you! I’ll get you out!”

As Hank toppled into the back of the cruiser, his bloody hands squealing along the faux leather of the bench seat, he figured it was probably a good idea that he didn’t say anything else.

Watching the pale, worried face amid dark curls as the cruiser drove by, Hank couldn’t help but think about what Connor had said. And what he _hadn’t_ said. Not _I’ll talk to Carl_ but _I’ll come get you_.

_I’ll get you out._

***

Cooling his heels in a concrete holding cell with flaking paint on the walls, Hank had plenty of unoccupied time to reflect. Over the long hours, which were punctuated only by chatter from the troopers and the occasional ringing phone, he started to understand why kids who’d acted out were told to “think about what they’d done.” 

What _he’d_ done boiled down to a bunch of idiotic peacocking, starting with the drag race on the damn highway. Provoking Officer Peterman had been the mustard on the shit sandwich, delaying their arrival in Detroit by who knew how long. 

Not to mention giving a piss-poor first impression to Connor. The whole fiasco was unprofessional up one side and down the other. If Carl or Connor—or _anyone_ —had rushed to his rescue within an hour or so, he wouldn’t have been forced to think about _why_ he’d behaved like a teenager. Like the same dumb 18-year-old, in fact, who’d ditched out of Indianapolis in 1986 with barely any cash and no plans. Hank had done far too much hard living to be that kid anymore. 

But whether it was his energy or the promise he represented, Connor made him want to recapture some of that headlong, ask-questions-later chutzpah. Still, it was either telling or pathetic that he’d slipped so easily back into the same attitude he’d had during his first years in the UK. Before rehab or a single championship win. When everything had rested on the back of confidence and tough talk.

When Hank had been _unworthy_.

Stewing in that thought only made him angrier as he waited. Nobody spoke a word to him while he sat in the cell, or offered food or drink. There was no mirror to inspect the place where his cheek had hit the car door. It was puffy and raw, warm to the touch. 

At least there was a toilet, and a small sink, where he’d washed the crusted blood off his hands and rinsed the place on the outer edge of his right wrist where the cuff had split the crepey skin.

By the time a uniformed trooper—thankfully not Peterman—came by the cell to give Hank a sour look, his tongue felt like sandpaper and his mouth tasted like the morning after a binge. 

The trooper had a pinched face and dyed-blonde hair with visible brown roots scraped back hard into a limp ponytail. 

“Henry Anderson?” she asked. Like she suspected he’d somehow managed to smuggle another person into the cell.

“Unfortunately,” Hank said. 

She frowned. “You’re free to go.”

He hesitated, waiting for a catch—maybe another kick to the back of the knee—but the trooper just indicated a door down the hall with her pointed chin.

Feeling bleary and stiff, Hank walked through the door, coming out behind a desk into a waiting area. It smelled like stale coffee and air freshener. Movement near a vending machine in the corner caught his eye. 

Connor, wearing a beat-up track jacket against the insistent air conditioning, was hurrying toward the desk. His curls lay limp from sweat, but by the expression he wore, somebody might think that Hank had just found his missing dog instead of forcing him to wait for hours in a shitty lobby to bail his coach out of lockup.

It wrenched Hank’s heart and made shame prickle in his skin like fever. It really _was_ too cold by half in the waiting area, but he felt like he radiated heat. No doubt he smelled pretty ripe, too, but Connor charged right up like a tsunami and smacked into him with a breath-stealing hug.

“Shit, hey...whoa,” Hank said, awkwardly patting his back. “I’m okay.” He backed away, grabbing Connor’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length and inspecting his face. “Did you get hold of Carl?” he asked.

“I didn’t call him,” Connor said. 

“What? Jesus, kid, please don’t tell me you called your uncle or something.” Hank looked around the room, almost like he expected to see a disapproving Jeff Fowler standing somewhere. 

The female trooper had come out and was standing behind the desk, giving them both the stink-eye. 

“No, no. I’ll tell you what happened.” Connor wrapped a gentle hand around Hank’s bicep and pulled him toward the exit. “Let’s get out of here first.”

Twilight had settled over the desert when they walked outside. The pavement still held the heat of the day, but it was dissipating quickly into the desert night. A faint smell of exhaust hung in the air, but anything was better than the stale, unmoving funk inside the station. 

Hank pulled in a deep breath. “What happened?” he asked. “Why didn’t you call Carl?”

Connor looked a little sheepish. “I followed Officer Peterman’s car here. He tried to get me to go away for a while, but I kept at him until he let me see his supervisor.”

“Okay,” Hank said, confused.

“I mean, when Peterman arrested you, he didn’t read you any rights or anything,” said Connor. “I couldn’t figure out whether that was illegal or not, but I decided I’d try it, anyway. Told the sergeant that Peterman didn’t give you the Miranda rights, and he said he didn’t have to unless you were getting arrested for a specific crime. I mean, I thought that was kind of stupid, but I told him, ‘Okay.’ Then I showed him the video of Peterman roughing you up and told him I’d take it right to the nearest TV station.”

Hank stood dumbstruck, his mouth hanging open.

Connor raised his shoulders self-consciously and looked down at the tarmac. “He told me to wait. I was really worried, thinking—you know—he might try to say I was blackmailing him or something. I waited for about an hour, then that lady came out and said you were getting out.”

At that point, Hank was finally able to make a sound, an incredulous little noise. “Holy shit,” he said. 

Connor looked up, a tentative smile at the corners of his mouth, contingent on Hank’s approval.

The wide grin hurt Hank’s bruised cheek, but just then it didn’t matter. “That’s incredible,” he said, clapping Connor firmly on the shoulder. “Should hire you as my lawyer, too.”

Connor beamed but turned his head away, possibly hoping Hank wouldn’t see how pleased he was. 

That made Hank’s chest feel tight. The poor kid knew on some level that his admiration was outsized, that the icon he’d followed so faithfully might not match up with the real deal. It was a glimpse of maturity Hank had thought he lacked. And good God—had he been wrong in thinking Connor was timid outside a race car. His plan was devious on a level Hank didn’t think he could manage.

“I’m—” he started, then shook his head and chuckled, smoothing his hair back from his face. He caught a whiff of failing deodorant when he raised his arm and hoped he could get someplace to clean up fairly soon. “I mean, I’m really impressed. That was some quick thinking. I just...owe you an apology.”

“You don’t.”

“I do,” Hank said. “Because you shouldn’t have had to do it. I acted like a horse’s ass. So…” he trailed off, squinting although the only light came from the wan lamps over the parking lot.

“It’s okay,” Connor said. 

Hank shook his head again.

“Well,” Connor admitted in a soft voice, “it’s not what I would have done.”

That stung, but Hank swallowed down the guilt. He knew it was deserved.

“I mean the part _after_ the driving,” said Connor.

Raising his head, Hank arched an eyebrow. “Oh, yeah? So if you were behind the wheel, you would have done one-eighty down a public road?”

Connor’s laugh was giddy. “For sure,” he said.

Finally, some of the burn of shame leached out and let Hank finally feel the cool desert night on his skin. He laughed and patted Connor’s shoulder again—softly this time. “You hungry?”

“ _Starving_.”

“Okay. Let’s get you a burger or something.”

***

Warm-hued morning light filtered into the hotel room. 

Hank hadn’t thought to close the blackout curtains the night before. After wolfing down a club sandwich and fries at a diner with Connor, he’d drifted into the room in a daze, satiated and weary to the bone. After a hot shower to scrub off the stink from the holding cell, he’d collapsed on top of the bedspread, with only the presence of mind left to cram one of the limp bed pillows under his cheek before he dropped off. If there had been nightmares or a sudden moment of guilt-seized wakefulness in the night, he didn’t remember it. 

He’d slept like a stone.

The door to Connor’s room, which was right across from his, was closed when Hank stepped out into the hall. He knocked softly a couple of times—once calling Connor’s name—but there was no answer. If he was still conked out, then he deserved to be. 

Downstairs in the lobby, the coffee was passable enough. Hank chose to break with tradition for once to add sugar and cream. Outside, heat rose with the rising sun, which hovered over the low buildings of West Valley. The suburb where they’d found the hotel ran right up against the southwestern edge of Salt Lake City. 

He found Connor sitting cross-legged on top of a red boulder at the bottom of the drive, staring out over the gray-and-beige patchwork of the city. As he walked closer, he picked up a strong, almost medicinal odor.

Connor was fiddling with a sprig of some grayish-green plant, pulling off little buds or berries and letting them fall from between his fingers and bounce down the face of the rock.

“What’s that smell?” Hank asked.

Turning, smiling, Connor said, “Sagebrush.” He held up the twig. “It’ll probably ruin the taste of your coffee if you drink it here.”

“What’s it used for?” Hank asked.

“Smudging,” Connor told him. “You burn the dried stuff and wave it around in your house, and it’s supposed to cleanse the space or drive out evil or whatever.”

Hank wrinkled his nose. “You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

Connor gave a ringing laugh. “No. Just grew up around a lot of hippies.”

A sip of the coffee proved him right about the overwhelming smell. Hank grimaced. “Smells like shit. The burning stuff probably smells worse.”

“It does.”

“Never got much into any superstitious shit,” Hank said.

Connor cleared his throat. “Do you believe in God?” he asked.

Hank paused, debating his answer. Finally, he said, “No.”

“I don’t know if I do, either,” Connor told him. Then he laughed softly. “Not that I’d tell my mom that.”

“Is she big into Jesus?”

Connor turned to look at Hank. “Oh, no—we’re Jewish.”

“What?”

He laughed. “My mom converted. Dad didn’t care, but she wanted to. Before they got married. Mom said my grandma wasn’t very happy about it. I guess it was lucky that Uncle Jeff already had Aunt Anita. It was weird enough that Dad was white!”

Hank scratched his scalp through hair that was mussed from sleeping on it wet. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you or anything. Just...unexpected.”

“No, no. It’s okay,” Connor said. “I wasn’t offended.” He looked down at the sagebrush twig in his hand, rolling it through pale pink fingertips. “That’s what Mom texted about the other night. She asked me to go to temple in Detroit if I can.”

“Are you going to?”

Connor sighed. “Not sure,” he said. “I mean, her beliefs—our temple and all the people there—they’ve really helped her since Dad died. I feel like, maybe if I’m going away, I should go to services every once in a while to…” He stopped there, chewing his lip instead.

“To make it seem like you haven’t given up on home?” Hank asked.

The smile he got in return was slim, pained. “Basically, yeah.” Connor sighed again. “You’re kind of lucky that you didn’t have to worry about stuff like this.”

“Don’t say that,” Hank told him, maybe a little more sharply than he intended. He lowered his voice. “I’m just saying, you’ve got a family that actually cares about you, that worries about you. I’m sure this kind of thing is tough, but it’s got to be better than not having a soft place to fall when it happens. Because it’s going to happen. Probably not like it did for me, but everybody gets to a low place in life. Usually more than once.”

“I know,” Connor said. 

“Well, your dad—” Hank started, then caught himself.

Connor only nodded. He looked for a second or two like he was going to say something else, but instead he flexed the twig in his hands, looking out into the shimmering distance. The buildings of downtown Salt Lake winked as the rising sun bounced off the city’s uncounted windows.

Hank, who had been staring along Connor’s sight line, flinched at the dry sound of the sagebrush twig snapping in half. Something felt tight in his throat, the thick camphor smell of the plants only serving to make it worse.

“Look,” he said to Connor, “I could tell you, ‘Just do what you want.’ I mean, that’s what I believe. If you need to go to this temple or something to make your mom happy, then do that. If you need to break free a little and not go—hell, if you need to break free a _lot_ , do some bar-hopping, bring home a pretty girl or two—then I say do that.”

“Oh,” said Connor, looking truly overwhelmed for the first time. “No. I don’t, you know... _bring people home_. I’m not—”

Hank waved his hand, trying to dispel whatever cloud he’d put over Connor’s head, however he’d misstepped. Not that it was much of a puzzle: he’d once again assumed Connor would act the way _he_ had. Getting to know him better now was driving home how much _more_ he had in common with Gavin, and it was an uncomfortable thought at best.

“I know,” Hank said. “You’re not me.” He paused, waiting for a response. But, studying Connor’s face, it didn’t seem much of an appeasement.

“Sometimes I wish I could—I don’t know—care a little less.” Connor looked at the two halves of the sagebrush sprig, one in each hand, then tossed both to the ground at the foot of the boulder. “There are some things that I know I want, and some things I haven’t had, so I can’t know whether I want them or not.”

“Well,” Hank said, summoning a patently fake laugh, “as long as you still want to be a Formula One driver. That’d be good for me.” It was a lame deflection, but he didn’t want to chase that line of conversation any farther. Not just then.

Connor smiled up at him in response, but something heavy behind it pulled the expression askew, stripping it of its usual unburdened brilliance.

And for all time that Hank had spent in flaying his life open in rehab and recovery, he wondered if that self-reflection had ever stuck. It always seemed he went right back to leaving things unasked and unsaid, letting the pressure build behind his cowardice until the day that it broke apart completely.

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream about Hankcon (and other DBH ships) on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/YeWriterBitche), my main haunt these days. I'm always open to talking ships and writing with anybody!
> 
> Select definitions:
> 
> Pit/Pit wall - the outlet area from the circuit/track where the mechanics, strategists, managers, etc. stay during the race. Also where the drivers come in to change tires or make mechanical adjustments, hence "pit stop."
> 
> Downforce - the force generated by airflow over the surfaces of the car that keeps it pressed against the track at extreme speeds.
> 
> Constructor - in F1 terms, the company that builds the body of the car. Separate from engine manufacturers, so an F1 driver could be on Team X, driving a Constructor Y car with a Z Brand engine. F1 has two world championships annually, one for drivers independent of the constructor or team, and one for constructors independent of the driver or team.


End file.
